THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


Elizabeth 
and  her  German  Garden 


Elizabeth 

and  her 

German  Garden 


New  Edition  with  Additions 


gotfe 
THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
IQOI 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,   1900, 
BY   THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY. 


First  Edition,  September,  1898.  Reprinted  November,  1898;  December, 
1898;  March,  May,  and  July,  1899  (twice);  August  and  October,  1899 
(twice). 

New  Edition  with  additions  set  up  and  electrotyped  July,  1900.  Reprinted 
September,  November,  December,  1900;  January,  twice,  1901. 

New  Edition  with  Illustrations,  October,  December,  1900;  January,  1901. 


Norwood  Press 

J.  S.  Curbing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Elizabeth 
and  her  German  Garden 


2039208 


ELIZABETH  AND  HER  GERMAN 
GARDEN 

May  ytb.  —  I  love  my  garden.  I  am  writing 
in  it  now  in  the  late  afternoon  loveliness,  much 
interrupted  by  the  mosquitoes  and  the  temptation 
to  look  at  all  the  glories  of  the  new  green  leaves 
washed  half  an  hour  ago  in  a  cold  shower.  Two 
owls  are  perched  near  me,  and  are  carrying  on  a 
long  conversation  that  I  enjoy  as  much  as  any 
warbling  of  nightingales.  The  gentleman  owl 

says  ffiZ=s|~^j,  and  she  answers  from  her  tree 
a  little  way  off,  w^*tjn?  beautifully  assenting 

to  and  completing  her  lord's  remark,  as  becomes  a 
properly  constructed  German  she-owl.  They  say 
the  same  thing  over  and  over  again  so  emphati- 
cally that  I  think  it  must  be  something  nasty 
about  me ;  but  I  shall  not  let  myself  be  fright- 
ened away  by  the  sarcasm  of  owls. 

This  is  less  a  garden  than  a  wilderness.  No 
one  has  lived  in  the  house,  much  less  in  the  gar- 
den, for  twenty-five  years,  and  it  is  such  a  pretty 
old  place  that  the  people  who  might  have  lived 


2  ELIZABETH    AND 

here  and  did  not,  deliberately  preferring  the  hor- 
rors of  a  flat  in  a  town,  must  have  belonged  to 
that  vast  number  of  eyeless  and  earless  persons 
of  whom  the  world  seems  chiefly  composed. 
Noseless  too,  though  it  does  not  sound  pretty ; 
but  the  greater  part  of  my  spring  happiness  is  due 
to  the  scent  of  the  wet  earth  and  young  leaves. 

I  am  always  happy  (out  of  doors  be  it  under- 
stood, for  indoors  there  are  servants  and  furni- 
ture), but  in  quite  different  ways,  and  my  spring 
happiness  bears  no  resemblance  to  my  summer  or 
autumn  happiness,  though  it  is  not  more  intense, 
and  there  were  days  last  winter  when  I  danced  for 
sheer  joy  out  in  my  frost-bound  garden,  in  spite 
of  my  years  and  children.  But  I  did  it  behind 
a  bush,  having  a  due  regard  for  the  decencies. 

There  are  so  many  bird-cherries  round  me, 
great  trees  with  branches  sweeping  the  grass,  and 
they  are  so  wreathed  just  now  with  white  blos- 
soms and  tenderest  green  that  the  garden  looks 
like  a  wedding.  I  never  saw  such  masses  of 
them ;  they  seemed  to  fill  the  place.  Even 
across  a  little  stream  that  bounds  the  garden  on 
the  east,  and  right  in  the  middle  of  the  cornfield 
beyond,  there  is  an  immense  one,  a  picture  of  grace 
and  glory  against  the  cold  blue  of  the  spring  sky. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  3 

My  garden  is  surrounded  by  cornfields  and 
meadows,  and  beyond  are  great  stretches  of  sandy 
heath  and  pine  forests,  and  where  the  forests  leave 
off  the  bare  heath  begins  again  ;  but  the  forests 
are  beautiful  in  their  lofty,  pink-stemmed  vast- 
ness,  far  overhead  the  crowns  of  softest  gray-green, 
and  underfoot  a  bright  green  wortleberry  carpet, 
and  everywhere  the  breathless  silence ;  and  the 
bare  heaths  are  beautiful  too,  for  one  can  see 
across  them  into  eternity  almost,  and  to  go  out 
on  to  them  with  one's  face  towards  the  setting 
sun  is  like  going  into  the  very  presence  of  God. 

In  the  middle  of  this  plain  is  the  oasis  of  bird- 
cherries  and  greenery  where  I  spend  my  happy 
days,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  oasis  is  the  gray 
stone  house  with  many  gables  where  I  pass  my 
reluctant  nights.  The  house  is  very  old,  and  has 
been  added  to  at  various  times.  It  was  a  convent 
before  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  and  the  vaulted 
chapel,  with  its  brick  floor  worn  by  pious  peasant 
knees,  is  now  used  as  a  hall.  Gustavus  Adolphus 
and  his  Swedes  passed  through  more  than  once, 
as  is  duly  recorded  in  archives  still  preserved,  for 
we  are  on  what  was  then  the  high-road  between 
Sweden  and  Brandenburg  the  unfortunate.  The 
Lion  of  the  North  was  no  doubt  an  estimable 


4  ELIZABETH   AND 

person  and  acted  wholly  up  to  his  convictions, 
but  he  must  have  sadly  upset  the  peaceful  nuns, 
who  were  not  without  convictions  of  their  own, 
sending  them  out  on  to  the  wide,  empty  plain 
to  piteously  seek  some  life  to  replace  the  life  of 
silence  here. 

From  nearly  all  the  windows  of  the  house  I  can 
look  out  across  the  plain,  with  no  obstacle  in  the 
shape  of  a  hill,  right  away  to  a  blue  line  of  distant 
forest,  and  on  the  west  side  uninterruptedly  to  the 
setting  sun  —  nothing  but  a  green,  rolling  plain, 
with  a  sharp  edge  against  the  sunset.  I  love 
those  west  windows  better  than  any  others,  and 
have  chosen  my  bedroom  on  that  side  of  the 
house  so  that  even  times  of  hair-brushing  may 
not  be  entirely  lost,  and  the  young  woman  who 
attends  to  such  matters  has  been  taught  to  fulfil 
her  duties  about  a  mistress  recumbent  in  an  easy- 
chair  before  an  open  window,  and  not  to  profane 
with  chatter  that  sweet  and  solemn  time.  This 
girl  is  grieved  at  my  habit  of  living  almost  in  the 
garden,  and  all  her  ideas  as  to  the  sort  of  life  a 
respectable  German  lady  should  lead  have  got 
into  a  sad  muddle  since  she  came  to  me.  The 
people  round  about  are  persuaded  that  I  am,  to 
put  it  as  kindly  as  possible,  exceedingly  eccentric, 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  5 

for  the  news  has  travelled  that  I  spend  the  day 
out  of  doors  with  a  book,  and  that  no  mortal  eye 
has  ever  yet  seen  me  sew  or  cook.  But  why  cook 
when  you  can  get  some  one  to  cook  for  you  ? 
And  as  for  sewing,  the  maids  will  hem  the  sheets 
better  and  quicker  than  I  could,  and  all  forms  of 
needlework  of  the  fancy  order  are  inventions  of 
the  evil  one  for  keeping  the  foolish  from  applying 
their  heart  to  wisdom. 

We  had  been  married  five  years  before  it  struck 
us  that  we  might  as  well  make  use  of  this  place  by 
coming  down  and  living  in  it.  Those  five  years 
were  spent  in  a  flat  in  a  town,  and  during  their 
whole  interminable  length  I  was  perfectly  miserable 
and  perfectly  healthy,  which  disposes  of  the  ugly 
notion  that  has  at  times  disturbed  me  that  my 
happiness  here  is  less  due  to  the  garden  than  to  a 
good  digestion.  And  while  we  were  wasting  our 
lives  there,  here  was  this  dear  place  with  dandelions 
up  to  the  very  door,  all  the  paths  grass-grown  and 
completely  effaced,  in  winter  so  lonely,  with 
nobody  but  the  north  wind  taking  the  least  notice 
of  it,  and  in  May  —  in  all  those  five  lovely  Mays 
—  no  one  to  look  at  the  wonderful  bird-cherries 
and  still  more  wonderful  masses  of  lilacs,  every- 
thing glowing  and  blowing,  the  Virginia  creeper 


6  ELIZABETH   AND 

madder  every  year,  until  at  last,  in  October,  the 
very  roof  was  wreathed  with  blood-red  tresses,  the 
owls  and  the  squirrels  and  all  the  blessed  little 
birds  reigning  supreme,  and  not  a  living  creature 
ever  entering  the  empty  house  except  the  snakes, 
which  got  into  the  habit  during  those  silent  years 
of  wriggling  up  the  south  wall  into  the  rooms  on 
that  side  whenever  the  old  housekeeper  opened 
the  windows.  All  that  was  here,  —  peace,  and 
happiness,  and  a  reasonable  life,  —  and  yet  it  never 
struck  me  to  come  and  live  in  it.  Looking  back 
I  am  astonished,  and  can  in  no  way  account  for 
the  tardiness  of  my  discovery  that  here,  in  this 
far-away  corner,  was  my  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Indeed,  so  little  did  it  enter  my  head  to  even  use 
the  place  in  summer,  that  I  submitted  to  weeks 
of  seaside  life  with  all  its  horrors  every  year  ; 
until  at  last,  in  the  early  spring  of  last  year,  hav- 
ing come  down  for  the  opening  of  the  village 
school,  and  wandering  out  afterwards  into  the 
bare  and  desolate  garden,  I  don't  know  what 
smell  of  wet  earth  or  rotting  leaves  brought  back 
my  childhood  with  a  rush  and  all  the  happy  days 
I  had  spent  in  a  garden.  Shall  I  ever  forget  that 
day  ?  It  was  the  beginning  of  my  real  life, 
my  coming  of  age  as  it  were,  and  entering  into  my 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  7 

kingdom.  Early  March,  gray,  quiet  skies,  and 
brown,  quiet  earth  ;  leafless  and  sad  and  lonely 
enough  out  there  in  the  damp  and  silence,  yet 
there  I  stood  feeling  the  same  rapture  of  pure 
delight  in  the  first  breath  of  spring  that  I  used  to 
as  a  child,  and  the  five  wasted  years  fell  from  me 
like  a  cloak,  and  the  world  was  full  of  hope,  and 
I  vowed  myself  then  and  there  to  nature,  and 
have  been  happy  ever  since. 

My  other  half  being  indulgent,  and  with  some 
faint  thought  perhaps  that  it  might  be  as  well  to 
look  after  the  place,  consented  to  live  in  it  at  any 
rate  for  a  time ;  whereupon  followed  six  specially 
blissful  weeks  from  the  end  of  April  into  June, 
during  which  I  was  here  alone,  supposed  to  be 
superintending  the  painting  and  papering,  but  as 
a  matter  of  fact  only  going  into  the  house  when 
the  workmen  had  gone  out  of  it. 

How  happy  I  was !  I  don't  remember  any 
time  quite  so  perfect  since  the  days  when  I  was 
too  little  to  do  lessons  and  was  turned  out  with 
sugar  on  my  eleven  o'clock  bread  and  butter  on 
to  a  lawn  closely  strewn  with  dandelions  and  dai- 
sies. The  sugar  on  the  bread  and  butter  has  lost 
its  charm,  but  I  love  the  dandelions  and  daisies 
even  more  passionately  now  than  then,  and  never 


8  ELIZABETH   AND 

would  endure  to  see  them  all  mown  away  if  I  were 
not  certain  that  in  a  day  or  two  they  would  be 
pushing  up  their  little  faces  again  as  jauntily  as 
ever.  During  those  six  weeks  I  lived  in  a  world 
of  dandelions  and  delights.  The  dandelions  car- 
peted the  three  lawns,  —  they  used  to  be  lawns, 
but  have  long  since  blossomed  out  into  meadows 
filled  with  every  sort  of  pretty  weed,  —  and  under 
and  among  the  groups  of  leafless  oaks  and  beeches 
were  blue  hepaticas,  white  anemones,  violets,  and 
celandines  in  sheets.  The  celandines  in  particular 
delighted  me  with  their  clean,  happy  brightness, 
so  beautifully  trim  and  newly  varnished,  as  though 
they  too  had  had  the  painters  at  work  on  them. 
Then,  when  the  anemones  went,  came  a  few  stray 
periwinkles  and  Solomon's  Seal,  and  all  the  bird- 
cherries  blossomed  in  a  burst.  And  then,  before 
I  had  a  little  got  used  to  the  joy  of  their  flowers 
against  the  sky,  came  the  lilacs  —  masses  and 
masses  of  them,  in  clumps  on  the  grass,  with 
other  shrubs  and  trees  by  the  side  of  walks,  and 
one  great  continuous  bank  of  them  half  a  mile 
long  right  past  the  west  front  of  the  house,  away 
down  as  far  as  one  could  see,  shining  glorious 
against  a  background  of  firs.  When  that  time 
came,  and  when,  before  it  was  over,  the  acacias  all 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  9 

blossomed  too,  and  four  great  clumps  of  pale, 
silvery-pink  peonies  flowered  under  the  south 
windows,  I  felt  so  absolutely  happy,  and  blest, 
and  thankful,  and  grateful,  that  I  really  cannot 
describe  it.  My  days  seemed  to  melt  away  in  a 
dream  of  pink  and  purple  peace. 

There  were  only  the  old  housekeeper  and  her 
handmaiden  in  the  house,  so  that  on  the  plea  of 
not  giving  too  much  trouble  I  could  indulge  what 
my  other  half  calls  my  fantaisie  dereglee  as 
regards  meals  —  that  is  to  say,  meals  so  simple 
that  they  could  be  brought  out  to  the  lilacs  on 
a  tray ;  and  I  lived,  I  remember,  on  salad  and 
bread  and  tea  the  whole  time,  sometimes  a  very 
tiny  pigeon  appearing  at  lunch  to  save  me,  as  the 
old  lady  thought,  from  starvation.  Who  but  a 
woman  could  have  stood  salad  for  six  weeks,  even 
salad  sanctified  by  the  presence  and  scent  of  the 
most  gorgeous  lilac  masses  ?  I  did,  and  grew  in 
grace  every  day,  though  I  have  never  liked  it 
since.  How  often  now,  oppressed  by  the  neces- 
sity of  assisting  at  three  dining-room  meals  daily, 
two  of  which  are  conducted  by  the  functionaries 
held  indispensable  to  a  proper  maintenance  of 
the  family  dignity,  and  all  of  which  are  pervaded 
by  joints  of  meat,  how  often  do  I  think  of  my 


io  ELIZABETH    AND 

salad  days,  forty  in  number,  and  of  the  blessed- 
ness of  being  alone  as  I  was  then  alone  ! 

And  then  the  evenings,  when  the  workmen 
had  all  gone  and  the  house  was  left  to  emptiness 
and  echoes,  and  the  old  housekeeper  had  gathered 
up  her  rheumatic  limbs  into  her  bed,  and  my 
little  room  in  quite  another  part  of  the  house 
had  been  set  ready,  how  reluctantly  I  used  to 
leave  the  friendly  frogs  and  owls,  and  with  my 
heart  somewhere  down  in  my  shoes  lock  the  door 
to  the  garden  behind  me,  and  pass  through  the 
long  series  of  echoing  south  rooms  full  of  shadows 
and  ladders  and  ghostly  pails  of  painters'  mess, 
and  humming  a  tune  to  make  myself  believe  I 
liked  it,  go  rather  slowly  across  the  brick-floored 
hall,  up  the  creaking  stairs,  down  the  long  white- 
washed passage,  and  with  a  final  rush  of  panic 
whisk  into  my  room  and  double  lock  and  bolt 
the  door ! 

There  were  no  bells  in  the  house,  and  I  used 
to  take  a  great  dinner-bell  to  bed  with  me  so  that 
at  least  I  might  be  able  to  make  a  noise  if  fright- 
ened in  the  night,  though  what  good  it  would 
have  been  I  don't  know,  as  there  was  no  one  to 
hear.  The  housemaid  slept  in  another  little  cell 
opening  out  of  mine,  and  we  two  were  the  only 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  n 

/iving  creatures  in  the  great  empty  west  wing. 
She  evidently  did  not  believe  in  ghosts,  for  I 
could  hear  how  she  fell  asleep  immediately  after 
getting  into  bed ;  nor  do  I  believe  in  them, 
" mais  je  les  redoute"  as  a  French  lady  said,  who 
from  her  books  appears  to  have  been  strong- 
minded. 

The  dinner-bell  was  a  great  solace ;  it  was 
never  rung,  but  it  comforted  me  to  see  it  on  the 
chair  beside  my  bed,  as  my  nights  were  anything 
but  placid,  it  was  all  so  strange,  and  there  were 
such  queer  creakings  and  other  noises.  I  used 
to  lie  awake  for  hours,  startled  out  of  a  light 
sleep  by  the  cracking  of  some  board,  and  listen 
to  the  indifferent  snores  of  the  girl  in  the  next 
room.  In  the  morning,  of  course,  I  was  as  brave 
as  a  lion  and  much  amused  at  the  cold  perspira- 
tions of  the  night  before ;  but  even  the  nights 
seem  to  me  now  to  have  been  delightful,  and 
myself  like  those  historic  boys  who  heard  a  voice 
in  every  wind  and  snatched  a  fearful  joy.  I 
would  gladly  shiver  through  them  all  over  again 
for  the  sake  of  the  beautiful  purity  of  the  house, 
empty  of  servants  and  upholstery. 

How  pretty  the  bedrooms  looked  with  noth- 
ing in  them  but  their  cheerful  new  papers! 


ii  ELIZABETH   AND 

Sometimes  I  would  go  into  those  that  were  fin- 
ished  and  build  all  sorts  of  castles  in  the  air  about 
their  future  and  their  past.  Would  the  nuns 
who  had  lived  in  them  know  their  little  white- 
washed cells  again,  all  gay  with  delicate  flower 
papers  and  clean  white  paint  ?  And  how  aston- 
ished they  would  be  to  see  cell  No.  14  turned 
into  a  bathroom,  with  a  bath  big  enough  to  in- 
sure a  cleanliness  of  body  equal  to  their  purity 
of  soul !  They  would  look  upon  it  as  a  snare 
of  the  tempter;  and  I  know  that  in  my" own  case 
I  only  began  to  be  shocked  at  the  blackness  of 
my  nails  the  day  that  I  began  to  lose  the  first 
whiteness  of  my  soul  by  falling  in  love  at  fifteen 
with  the  parish  organist,  or  rather  with  the 
glimpse  of  surplice  and  Roman  nose  and  fiery 
moustache  which  was  all  I  ever  saw  of  him,  and 
which  I  loved  to  distraction  for  at  least  six 
months  ;  at  the  end  of  which  time,  going  out 
with  my  governess  one  day,  I  passed  him  in  the 
street,  and  discovered  that  his  unofficial  garb  was 
a  frock-coat  combined  with  a  turn-down  collar 
and  a  "  bowler "  hat,  and  never  loved  him  any 
more. 

The  first  part  of  that  time  of  blessedness  was 
the  most  perfect,  for  I  had  not  a  thought  of  any- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  13 

thing  but  the  peace  and  beauty  all  round  me. 
Then  he  appeared  suddenly  who  has  a  right  to 
appear  when  and  how  he  will  and  rebuked  me 
for  never  having  written,  and  when  I  told  him 
that  I  had  been  literally  too  happy  to  think  of 
writing,  he  seemed  to  take  it  as  a  reflection  on 
himself  that  I  could  be  happy  alone.  I  took 
him  round  the  garden  along  the  new  paths  I 
had  had  made,  and  showed  him  the  acacia  and 
lilac  glories,  and  he  said  that  it  was  the  purest 
selfishness  to  enjoy  myself  when  neither  he  nor 
the  offspring  were  with  me,  and  that  the  lilacs 
wanted  thoroughly  pruning.  I  tried  to  appease 
him  by  offering  him  the  whole  of  my  salad  and 
toast  supper  which  stood  ready  at  the  foot  of 
the  little  verandah  steps  when  we  came  back,  but 
nothing  appeased  that  Man  of  Wrath,  and  he 
said  he  would  go  straight  back  to  the  neglected 
family.  So  he  went ;  and  the  remainder  of  the 
precious  time  was  disturbed  by  twinges  of  con- 
science (to  which  I  am  much  subject)  whenever 
I  found  myself  wanting  to  jump  for  joy.  I  went 
to  look  at  the  painters  every  time  my  feet  were 
for  taking  me  to  look  at  the  garden  ;  I  trotted 
diligently  up  and  down  the  passages ;  I  criticised 
and  suggested  and  commanded  more  in  one  day 


14  ELIZABETH   AND 

than  I  had  done  in  all  the  rest  of  the  time  ;  I 
wrote  regularly  and  sent  my  love ;  but  I  could 
not  manage  to  fret  and  yearn.  What  are  you 
to  do  if  your  conscience  is  clear  and  your  liver 
in  order  and  the  sun  is  shining  ? 

May  loth.  —  I  knew  nothing  whatever  last  year 
about  gardening  and  this  year  know  very  little 
more,  but  I  have  dawnings  of  what  may  be  done, 
and  have  at  least  made  one  great  stride  —  from 
ipomaea  to  tea-roses. 

The  garden  was  an  absolute  wilderness.  It  is 
all  round  the  house,  but  the  principal  part  is  on 
the  south  side  and  has  evidently  always  been  so. 
The  south  front  is  one-storied,  a  long  series  of 
rooms  opening  one  into  the  other,  and  the  walls 
are  covered  with  Virginia  creeper.  There  is  a 
little  verandah  in  the  middle,  leading  by  a  flight 
of  rickety  wooden  steps  down  into  what  seems  to 
have  been  the  only  spot  in  the  whole  place  that 
was  ever  cared  for.  This  is  a  semicircle  cut  into 
the  lawn  and  edged  with  privet,  and  in  this  semi- 
circle are  eleven  beds  of  different  sizes  bordered 
with  box  and  arranged  round  a  sun-dial,  and  the 
sun-dial  is  very  venerable  and  moss-grown,  and 
greatly  beloved  by  me.  These  beds  were  the  only 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  15 

sign  of  any  attempt  at  gardening  to  be  seen  (except 
a  solitary  crocus  that  came  up  all  by  itself  each 
spring  in  the  grass,  not  because  it  wanted  to,  but 
because  it  could  not  help  it),  and  these  I  had  sown 
with  ipomaea,  the  whole  eleven,  having  found  a 
German  gardening  book,  according  to  which  ipo- 
maea  in  vast  quantities  was  the  one  thing  needful 
to  turn  the  most  hideous  desert  into  a  paradise. 
Nothing  else  in  that  book  was  recommended  with 
anything  like  the  same  warmth,  and  being  entirely 
ignorant  of  the  quantity  of  seed  necessary,  I  bought 
ten  pounds  of  it  and  had  it  sown  not  only  in  the 
eleven  beds  but  round  nearly  every  tree,  and  then 
waited  in  great  agitation  for  the  promised  paradise 
to  appear.  It  did  not,  and  I  learned  my  first 
lesson. 

Luckily  I  had  sown  two  great  patches  of  sweet- 
peas  which  made  me  very  happy  all  the  summer, 
and  then  there  were  some  sunflowers  and  a  few 
hollyhocks  under  the  south  windows,  with  Ma- 
donna lilies  in  between.  But  the  lilies,  after 
being  transplanted,  disappeared  to  my  great  dis- 
may, for  how  was  I  to  know  it  was  the  way  of 
lilies  ?  And  the  hollyhocks  turned  out  to  be 
rather  ugly  colours,  so  that  my  first  summer  was 
decorated  and  beautified  solely  by  sweet-peas. 


16  ELIZABETH   AND 

At  present  we  are  only  just  beginning  to 
breathe  after  the  bustle  of  getting  new  beds  and 
borders  and  paths  made  in  time  for  this  summer. 
The  eleven  beds  round  the  sun-dial  are  filled 
with  roses,  but  I  see  already  that  I  have  made 
mistakes  with  some.  As  I  have  not  a  living 
soul  with  whom  to  hold  communion  on  this  or 
indeed  on  any  matter,  my  only  way  of  learning 
is  by  making  mistakes.  All  eleven  were  to  have 
been  carpeted  with  purple  pansies,  but  finding 
that  I  had  not  enough  and  that  nobody  had  any 
to  sell  me,  only  six  have  got  their  pansies,  the 
others  being  sown  with  dwarf  mignonette.  Two 
of  the  eleven  are  filled  with  Marie  van  Houtte 
roses,  two  with  Viscountess  Folkestone,  two  with 
Laurette  Messimy,  one  with  Souvenir  de  la  Mal- 
maison,  one  with  Adam  and  Devoniensis,  two 
with  Persian  Yellow  and  Bicolor,  and  one  big  bed 
behind  the  sun-dial  with  three  sorts  of  red  roses 
(seventy-two  in  all),  Duke  of  Teck,  Cheshunt 
Scarlet,  and  Prefet  de  Limburg.  This  bed  is,  I 
am  sure,  a  mistake,  and  several  of  the  others  are, 
I  think,  but  of  course  I  must  wait  and  see,  being 
such  an  ignorant  person.  Then  I  have  had  two 
long  beds  made  in  the  grass  on  either  side  of  the 
semicircle,  each  sown  with  mignonette,  and  one 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  17 

filled  with  Marie  van  Houtte,  and  the  other  with 
Jules  Finger  and  the  Bride ;  and  in  a  warm 
corner  under  the  drawing-room  windows  is  a  bed 
of  Madame  Lambard,  Madame  de  Watteville, 
and  Comtesse  Riza  du  Pare ;  while  farther  down 
the  garden,  sheltered  on  the  north  and  west  by  a 
group  of  beeches  and  lilacs,  is  another  large  bed, 
containing  Rubens,  Madame  Joseph  Schwartz, 
and  the  Hon.  Edith  Gifford.  All  these  roses 
are  dwarf;  I  have  only  two  standards  in  the 
whole  garden,  two  Madame  George  Bruants,  and 
they  look  like  broomsticks.  How  I  long  for  the 
day  when  the  tea-roses  open  their  buds  !  Never 
did  I  look  forward  so  intensely  to  anything ;  and 
every  day  I  go  the  rounds,  admiring  what  the 
dear  little  things  have  achieved  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours  in  the  way  of  new  leaf  or  increase  of 
lovely  red  shoot. 

The  hollyhocks  and  lilies  (now  flourishing) 
are  still  under  the  south  windows  in  a  narrow 
border  on  the  top  of  a  grass  slope,  at  the  foot 
of  which  I  have  sown  two  long  borders  of  sweet- 
peas  facing  the  rose  beds,  so  that  my  roses  may 
have  something  almost  as  sweet  as  themselves  to 
look  at  until  the  autumn,  when  everything  is  to 
make  place  for  more  tea-roses.  The  path  leading 


1  8  ELIZABETH   AND 

away  from  this  semicircle  down  the  garden  is 
bordered  with  China  roses,  white  and  pink,  with 
here  and  there  a  Persian  Yellow.  I  wish  now  I 
had  put  tea-roses  there,  and  I  have  misgivings  as 
to  the  effect  of  the  Persian  Yellows  among  the 
Chinas,  for  the  Chinas  are  such  wee  little  baby 
things,  and  the  Persian  Yellows  look  as  though 
they  intended  to  be  big  bushes. 

There  is  not  a  creature  in  all  this  part  of  the 
world  who  could  in  the  least  understand  with 
what  heart-beatings  I  am  looking  forward  to  the 
flowering  of  these  roses,  and  not  a  German  gar- 
dening book  that  does  not  relegate  all  tea-roses  to 
hot-houses,  imprisoning  them  for  life,  and  depriv- 
ing them  for  ever  of  the  breath  of  God.  It  was 
no  doubt  because  I  was  so  ignorant  that  I  rushed 
in  where  Teutonic  angels  fear  to  tread  and  made 
my  tea-roses  face  a  northern  winter  ;  but  they  did 
face  it  under  fir  branches  and  leaves,  and  not  one 
has  suffered,  and  they  are  looking  to-day  as  happy 
and  as  determined  to  enjoy  themselves  as  any 
roses,  I  am  sure,  in  Europe. 


May  i4/£.  —  To-day  I  am  writing  on  the  ve- 
randah with  the  three  babies,  more  persistent  than 
mosquitoes,  raging  round  me,  and  already  sev- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  19 

eral  of  the  thirty  fingers  have  been  in  the  ink-pot 
and  the  owners  consoled  when  duty  pointed  to 
rebukes.  But  who  can  rebuke  such  penitent  and 
drooping  sunbonnets  ?  I  can  see  nothing  but 
sunbonnets  and  pinafores  and  nimble  black  legs. 
These  three,  their  patient  nurse,  myself,  the 
gardener,  and  the  gardener's  assistant,  are  the 
only  people  who  ever  go  into  my  garden,  but 
then  neither  are  we  ever  out  of  it.  The  gardener 
has  been  here  a  year  and  has  given  me  notice 
regularly  on  the  first  of  every  month,  but  up  to 
now  has  been  induced  to  stay  on.  On  the  first 
of  this  month  he  came  as  usual,  and  with  deter- 
mination written  on  every  feature  told  me  he 
intended  to  go  in  June,  and  that  nothing  should 
alter  his  decision.  I  don't  think  he  knows  much 
about  gardening,  but  he  can  at  least  dig  and 
water,  and  some  of  the  things  he  sows  come  up, 
and  some  of  the  plants  he  plants  grow,  besides 
which  he  is  the  most  unflaggingly  industrious 
person  I  ever  saw,  and  has  the  great  merit  of 
never  appearing  to  take  the  faintest  interest  in 
what  we  do  in  the  garden.  So  I  have  tried  to 
keep  him  on,  not  knowing  what  the  next  one 
may  be  like,  and  when  I  asked  him  what  he  had 
to  complain  of  and  he  replied  "  Nothing,"  I 


20  ELIZABETH   AND 

could  only  conclude  that  he  has  a  personal  objec- 
tion to  me  because  of  my  eccentric  preference  for 
plants  in  groups  rather  than  plants  in  lines.  Per- 
haps, too,  he  does  not  like  the  extracts  from 
gardening  books  I  read  to  him  sometimes  when 
he  is  planting  or  sowing  something  new.  Being 
so  helpless  myself,  I  thought  it  simpler,  instead 
of  explaining,  to  take  the  book  itself  out  to  him 
and  let  him  have  wisdom  at  its  very  source, 
administering  it  in  doses  while  he  worked.  I 
quite  recognise  that  this  must  be  annoying,  and 
only  my  anxiety  not  to  lose  a  whole  year  through 
some  stupid  mistake  has  given  me  the  courage  to 
do  it.  I  laugh  sometimes  behind  the  book  at  his 
disgusted  face,  and  wish  we  could  be  photo- 
graphed, so  that  I  may  be  reminded  in  twenty 
years'  time,  when  the  garden  is  a  bower  of  love- 
liness and  I  learned  in  all  its  ways,  of  my  first 
happy  struggles  and  failures. 

All  through  April  he  was  putting  the  peren- 
nials we  had  sown  in  the  autumn  into  their  per- 
manent places,  and  all  through  April  he  went 
about  with  a  long  piece  of  string  making  parallel 
lines  down  the  borders  of  beautiful  exactitude  and 
arranging  the  poor  plants  like  soldiers  at  a  review. 
Two  long  borders  were  done  during  my  absence 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  21 

one  day,  and  when  I  explained  that  I  should  like 
the  third  to  have  plants  in  groups  and  not  in 
lines,  and  that  what  I  wanted  was  a  natural  effect 
with  no  bare  spaces  of  earth  to  be  seen,  he  looked 
even  more  gloomily  hopeless  than  usual ;  and  on 
my  going  out  later  on  to  see  the  result,  I  found 
he  had  planted  two  long  borders  down  the  sides 
of  a  straight  walk  with  little  lines  of  five  plants  in 
a  row  —  first  five  pinks,  and  next  to  them  five 
rockets,  and  behind  the  rockets  five  pinks,  and 
behind  the  pinks  five  rockets,  and  so  on  with 
different  plants  of  every  sort  and  size  down  to 
the  end.  When  I  protested,  he  said  he  had  only 
carried  out  my  orders  and  had  known  it  would 
not  look  well ;  so  I  gave  in,  and  the  remaining 
borders  were  done  after  the  pattern  of  the  first 
two,  and  I  will  have  patience  and  see  how  they 
look  this  summer,  before  digging  them  up  again ; 
for  it  becomes  beginners  to  be  humble. 

If  I  could  only  dig  and  plant  myself!  How 
much  easier,  besides  being  so  fascinating,  to  make 
your  own  holes  exactly  where  you  want  them  and 
put  in  your  plants  exactly  as  you  choose  instead 
of  giving  orders  that  can  only  be  half  understood 
from  the  moment  you  depart  from  the  lines  laid 
down  by  that  long  piece  of  string !  In  the  first 


22  ELIZABETH    AND 

ecstasy  of  having  a  garden  all  my  own,  and  in  my 
burning  impatience  to  make  the  waste  places 
blossom  like  a  rose,  I  did  one  warm  Sunday  in 
last  year's  April  during  the  servants'  dinner  hour, 
doubly  secure  from  the  gardener  by  the  day  and 
the  dinner,  slink  out  with  a  spade  and  a  rake  and 
feverishly  dig  a  little  piece  of  ground  and  break 
it  up  and  sow  surreptitious  ipomaea,  and  run 
back  very  hot  and  guilty  into  the  house,  and  get 
into  a  chair  and  behind  a  book  and  look  languid 
just  in  time  to  save  my  reputation.  And  why 
not  ?  It  is  not  graceful,  and  it  makes  one  hot ; 
but  it  is  a  blessed  sort  of  work,  and  if  Eve  had 
had  a  spade  in  Paradise  and  known  what  to  do 
with  it,  we  should  not  have  had  all  that  sad 
business  of  the  apple. 

What  a  happy  woman  I  am  living  in  a  garden, 
with  books,  babies,  birds,  and  flowers,  and  plenty 
of  leisure  to  enjoy  them  !  Yet  my  town  acquaint- 
ances look  upon  it  as  imprisonment,  and  burying, 
and  I  don't  know  what  besides,  and  would  rend 
the  air  with  their  shrieks  if  condemned  to  such  a 
life.  Sometimes  I  feel  as  if  I  were  blest  above 
all  my  fellows  in  being  able  to  find  my  happiness 
so  easily.  I  believe  I  should  always  be  good  if 
the  sun  always  shone,  and  could  enjoy  myself  very 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  23 

well  in  Siberia  on  a  fine  day.  And  what  can  life 
in  town  offer  in  the  way  of  pleasure  to  equal  the 
delight  of  any  one  of  the  calm  evenings  I  have 
had  this  month  sitting  alone  at  the  foot  of  the 
verandah  steps,  with  the  perfume  of  young  larches 
all  about,  and  the  May  moon  hanging  low  over 
the  beeches,  and  the  beautiful  silence  made  only 
more  profound  in  its  peace  by  the  croaking  of 
distant  frogs  and  hooting  of  owls  ?  A  cockchafer 
darting  by  close  to  my  ear  with  a  loud  hum  sends 
a  shiver  through  me,  partly  of  pleasure  at  the 
reminder  of  past  summers,  and  partly  of  fear 
lest  he  should  get  caught  in  my  hair.  The  Man 
of  Wrath  says  they  are  pernicious  creatures  and 
should  be  killed.  I  would  rather  get  the  killing 
done  at  the  end  of  the  summer  and  not  crush 
them  out  of  such  a  pretty  world  at  the  very 
beginning  of  all  the  fun. 

This  has  been  quite  an  eventful  afternoon. 
My  eldest  baby,  born  in  April,  is  five  years  old, 
and  the  youngest,  born  in  June,  is  three ;  so  that 
the  discerning  will  at  once  be  able  to  guess  the 
age  of  the  remaining  middle  or  May  baby. 
While  I  was  stooping  over  a  group  of  hollyhocks 
planted  on  the  top  of  the  only  thing  in  the  shape 
of  a  hill  the  garden  possesses,  the  April  baby,  who 


24  ELIZABETH   AND 

had  been  sitting  pensive  on  a  tree  stump  close  by, 
got  up  suddenly  and  began  to  run  aimlessly  about, 
shrieking  and  wringing  her  hands  with  every  symp- 
tom of  terror.  I  stared,  wondering  what  had  come 
to  her ;  and  then  I  saw  that  a  whole  army  of 
young  cows,  pasturing  in  a  field  next  to  the  gar- 
den, had  got  through  the  hedge  and  were  grazing 
perilously  near  my  tea-roses  and  most  precious 
belongings.  The  nurse  and  I  managed  to  chase 
them  away,  but  not  before  they  had  trampled 
down  a  border  of  pinks  and  lilies  in  the  cruellest 
way,  and  made  great  holes  in  a  bed  of  China 
roses,  and  even  begun  to  nibble  at  a  Jackmanni 
clematis  that  I  am  trying  to  persuade  to  climb 
up  a  tree  trunk.  The  gloomy  gardener  happened 
to  be  ill  in  bed,  and  the  assistant  was  at  vespers 
—  as  Lutheran  Germany  calls  afternoon  tea  or 
its  equivalent  —  so  the  nurse  filled  up  the  holes 
as  well  as  she  could  with  mould,  burying  the 
crushed  and  mangled  roses,  cheated  for  ever  of 
their  hopes  of  summer  glory,  and  I  stood  by 
looking  on  dejectedly.  The  June  baby,  who  is 
two  feet  square  and  valiant  beyond  her  size  and 
years,  seized  a  stick  much  bigger  than  herself  and 
went  after  the  cows,  the  cowherd  being  nowhere 
to  be  seen.  She  planted  herself  in  front  of  them 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  25 

brandishing  her  stick,  and  they  stood  in  a  row  and 
stared  at  her  in  great  astonishment ;  and  she  kept 
them  off  until  one  of  the  men  from  the  farm 
arrived  with  a  whip,  and  having  found  the  cow- 
herd sleeping  peacefully  in  the  shade,  gave  him 
a  sound  beating.  The  cowherd  is  a  great  hulking 
young  man,  much  bigger  than  the  man  who  beat 
him,  but  he  took  his  punishment  as  part  of  the 
day's  work  and  made  no  remark  of  any  sort. 
It  could  not  have  hurt  him  much  through  his 
leather  breeches,  and  I  think  he  deserved  it ; 
but  it  must  be  demoralising  work  for  a  strong 
young  man  with  no  brains  looking  after  cows. 
Nobody  with  less  imagination  than  a  poet  ought 
to  take  it  up  as  a  profession. 

After  the  June  baby  and  I  had  been  welcomed 
back  by  the  other  two  with  as  many  hugs  as 
though  we  had  been  restored  to  them  from  great 
perils,  and  while  we  were  peacefully  drinking  tea 
under  a  beech  tree,  I  happened  to  look  up  into 
its  mazy  green,  and  there,  on  a  branch  quite  close 
to  my  head,  sat  a  little  baby  owl.  I  got  on  the 
seat  and  caught  it  easily,  for  it  could  not  fly,  and 
how  it  had  reached  the  branch  at  all  is  a  mystery. 
It  is  a  little  round  ball  of  gray  fluff,  with  the 
quaintest,  wisest,  solemn  face.  Poor  thing !  I 


26  ELIZABETH   AND 

ought  to  have  let  it  go,  but  the  temptation  to 
keep  it  until  the  Man  of  Wrath,  at  present  on  a 
journey,  has  seen  it  was  not  to  be  resisted,  as  he 
has  often  said  how  much  he  would  like  to  have  a 
young  owl  and  try  and  tame  it.  So  I  put  it  into 
a  roomy  cage  and  slung  it  up  on  a  branch  near 
where  it  had  been  sitting,  and  which  cannot  be  far 
from  its  nest  and  its  mother.  We  had  hardly 
subsided  again  to  our  tea  when  I  saw  two  more 
balls  of  fluff  on  the  ground  in  the  long  grass  and 
scarcely  distinguishable  at  a  little  distance  from 
small  mole-hills.  These  were  promptly  united  to 
their  relation  in  the  cage,  and  now  when  the  Man 
of  Wrath  comes  home,  not  only  shall  he  be  wel- 
comed by  a  wife  decked  with  the  orthodox  smiles, 
but  by  the  three  little  longed-for  owls.  Only  it 
seems  wicked  to  take  them  from  their  mother, 
and  I  know  that  I  shall  let  them  go  again  some 
day  —  perhaps  the  very  next  time  the  Man  of 
Wrath  goes  on  a  journey.  I  put  a  small  pot  of 
water  in  the  cage,  though  they  never  could  have 
tasted  water  yet  unless  they  drink  the  raindrops 
off  the  beech  leaves.  I  suppose  they  get  all  the 
liquid  they  need  from  the  bodies  of  the  mice  and 
other  dainties  provided  for  them  by  their  fond 
parents.  But  the  raindrop  idea  is  prettier. 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  27 

May  i$tb.  —  How  cruel  it  was  of  me  to  put 
those  poor  little  owls  into  a  cage  even  for  one 
night !  I  cannot  forgive  myself,  and  shall  never 
pander  to  the  Man  of  Wrath's  wishes  again. 
This  morning  I  got  up  early  to  see  how  they 
were  getting  on,  and  I  found  the  door  of  the 
cage  wide  open  and  no  owls  to  be  seen.  I 
thought  of  course  that  somebody  had  stolen  them 
—  some  boy  from  the  village,  or  perhaps  the 
chastised  cowherd.  But  looking  about  I  saw  one 
perched  high  up  in  the  branches  of  the  beech 
tree,  and  then  to  my  dismay  one  lying  dead  on 
the  ground.  The  third  was  nowhere  to  be  seen, 
and  is  probably  safe  in  its  nest.  The  parents 
must  have  torn  at  the  bars  of  the  cage  until  by 
chance  they  got  the  door  open,  and  then  dragged 
the  little  ones  out  and  up  into  the  tree.  The  one 
that  is  dead  must  have  been  blown  off  the  branch, 
as  it  was  a  windy  night  and  its  neck  is  broken. 
There  is  one  happy  life  less  in  the  garden  to-day 
through  my  fault,  and  it  is  such  a  lovely,  warm 
day — just  the  sort  of  weather  for  young  soft 
things  to  enjoy  and  grow  in.  The  babies  are 
greatly  distressed,  and  are  digging  a  grave,  and 
preparing  funeral  wreaths  of  dandelions. 

Just  as  I  had  written  that  I  heard  sounds  of 


28  ELIZABETH   AND 

arrival,  and  running  out  I  breathlessly  told  the 
Man  of  Wrath  how  nearly  I  had  been  able  to  give 
him  the  owls  he  has  so  often  said  he  would  like  to 
have,  and  how  sorry  I  was  they  were  gone,  and 
how  grievous  the  death  of  one,  and  so  on  after  the 
voluble  manner  of  women. 

He  listened  till  I  paused  to  breathe,  and  then 
he  said,  "  I  am  surprised  at  such  cruelty.  How 
could  you  make  the  mother  owl  suffer  so  ?  She 
had  never  done  you  any  harm." 

Which  sent  me  out  of  the  house  and  into  the 
garden  more  convinced  than  ever  that  he  sang 
true  who  sang  — 

Two  paradises  'twere  in  one  to  live  in  Paradise  alone. 

May  i6tb. — The  garden  is  the  place  I  go  to  for 
refuge  and  shelter,  not  the  house.  In  the  house 
are  duties  and  annoyances,  servants  to  exhort  and 
admonish,  furniture,  and  meals ;  but  out  there 
blessings  crowd  round  me  at  every  step  —  it  is 
there  that  I  am  sorry  for  the  unkindness  in  me, 
for  those  selfish  thoughts  that  are  so  much  worse 
than  they  feel ;  it  is  there  that  all  my  sins  and 
silliness  are  forgiven,  there  that  I  feel  protected 
and  at  home,  and  every  flower  and  weed  is  a 
friend  and  every  tree  a  lover.  When  I  have  been 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  29 

vexed  I  run  out  to  them  for  comfort,  and  when  I 
have  been  angry  without  just  cause,  it  is  there  that 
I  find  absolution.  Did  ever  a  woman  have  so 
many  friends  ?  And  always  the  same,  always 
ready  to  welcome  me  and  fill  me  with  cheerful 
thoughts.  Happy  children  of  a  common  Father, 
why  should  I,  their  own  sister,  be  less  content 
and  joyous  than  they  ?  Even  in  a  thunder  storm, 
when  other  people  are  running  into  the  house,  I 
run  out  of  it.  I  do  not  like  thunder  storms  — 
they  frighten  me  for  hours  before  they  come, 
because  I  always  feel  them  on  the  way ;  but  it  is 
odd  that  I  should  go  for  shelter  to  the  garden. 
I  feel  better  there,  more  taken  care  of,  more 
petted.  When  it  thunders,  the  April  baby  says, 
"  There's  lieber  Gott  scolding  those  angels  again." 
And  once,  when  there  was  a  storm  in  the  night, 
she  complained  loudly,  and  wanted  to  know  why 
lieber  Gott  didn't  do  the  scolding  in  the  daytime, 
as  she  had  been  so  tight  asleep.  They  all  three 
speak  a  wonderful  mixture  of  German  and  Eng- 
lish, adulterating  the  purity  of  their  native  tongue 
by  putting  in  English  words  in  the  middle  of 
a  German  sentence.  It  always  reminds  me  of 
Justice  tempered  by  Mercy. 

We  have  been  cowslipping    to-day  in  a  little 


3o  ELIZABETH   AND 

wood  dignified  by  the  name  of  the  Hirschwald, 
because  it  is  the  happy  hunting-ground  of  in- 
numerable deer  who  fight  there  in  the  autumn 
evenings,  calling  each  other  out  to  combat  with 
bayings  that  ring  through  the  silence  and  send 
agreeable  shivers  through  the  lonely  listener.  I 
often  walk  there  in  September,  late  in  the  even- 
ing, and  sitting  on  a  fallen  tree  listen  fascinated 
to  their  angry  cries. 

We  made  cowslip  balls  sitting  on  the  grass. 
The  babies  had  never  seen  such  things  nor  had 
imagined  anything  half  so  sweet.  The  Hirsch- 
wald is  a  little  open  wood  of  silver  birches  and 
springy  turf  starred  with  flowers,  and  there  is  a 
tiny  stream  meandering  amiably  about  it  and 
decking  itself  in  June  with  yellow  flags.  I  have 
dreams  of  having  a  little  cottage  built  there,  with 
the  daisies  up  to  the  door,  and  no  path  of  any 
sort — just  big  enough  to  hold  myself  and  one 
baby  inside  and  a  purple  clematis  outside.  Two 
rooms  —  a  bedroom  and  a  kitchen.  How  scared 
we  would  be  at  night,  and  how  completely  happy 
by  day  !  I  know  the  exact  spot  where  it  should 
stand,  facing  south-east,  so  that  we  should  get 
all  the  cheerfulness  of  the  morning,  and  close  to 
the  stream,  so  that  we  might  wash  our  plates 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  31 

among  the  flags.  Sometimes,  when  in  the  mood 
for  society,  we  would  invite  the  remaining  babies 
to  tea  and  entertain  them  with  wild  strawberries 
on  plates  of  horse-chestnut  leaves ;  but  no  one 
less  innocent  and  easily  pleased  than  a  baby 
would  be  permitted  to  darken  the  effulgence 
of  our  sunny  cottage  —  indeed,  I  don't  suppose 
that  anybody  wiser  would  care  to  come.  Wise 
people  want  so  many  things  before  they  can  even 
begin  to  enjoy  themselves,  and  I  feel  perpetually 
apologetic  when  with  them,  for  only  being  able 
to  offer  them  that  which  I  love  best  myself — 
apologetic,  and  ashamed  of  being  so  easily  con- 
tented. 

The  other  day  at  a  dinner  party  in  the  nearest 
town  (it  took  us  the  whole  afternoon  to  get  there) 
the  women  after  dinner  were  curious  to  know  how 
I  had  endured  the  winter,  cut  off  from  everybody 
and  snowed  up  sometimes  for  weeks. 

"  Ah,  these  husbands  !  "  sighed  an  ample  lady, 
lugubriously  shaking  her  head ;  "  they  shut  up 
their  wives  because  it  suits  them,  and  don't  care 
what  their  sufferings  are." 

Then  the  others  sighed  and  shook  their  heads 
too,  for  the  ample  lady  was  a  great  local  poten- 
tate, and  one  began  to  tell  how  another  dreadful 


32  ELIZABETH   AND 

husband  had  brought  his  young  wife  into  the 
country  and  had  kept  her  there,  concealing  her 
beauty  and  accomplishments  from  the  public  in 
a  most  cruel  manner,  and  how,  after  spending  a 
certain  number  of  years  in  alternately  weeping 
and  producing  progeny,  she  had  quite  lately  run 
away  with  somebody  unspeakable  —  I  think  it 
was  the  footman,  or  the  baker,  or  some  one  of 
that  sort. 

"  But  I  am  quite  happy,"  I  began,  as  soon  as 
I  could  put  in  a  word. 

"Ah,  a  good  little  wife,  making  the  best  of 
it,"  and  the  female  potentate  patted  my  hand, 
but  continued  gloomily  to  shake  her  head. 

"You  cannot  possibly  be  happy  in  the  winter 
entirely  alone,"  asserted  another  lady,  the  wife  of 
a  high  military  authority  and  not  accustomed  to 
be  contradicted. 

"But  I  am." 

"  But  how  can  you  possibly  be  at  your  age  ? 
No,  it  is  not  possible." 

"But  I  am." 

"  Your  husband  ought  to  bring  you  to  town 
in  the  winter." 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  be  brought  to  town." 

"And  not  let  you  waste  your  best  years  buried." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  33 

"But  I  like  being  buried." 

"  Such  solitude  is  not  right." 

"But  I'm  not  solitary." 

"  And  can  come  to  no  good."  She  was  get- 
ting quite  angry. 

There  was  a  chorus  of  No  Indeeds  at  her  last 
remark,  and  renewed  shaking  of  heads. 

"  I  enjoyed  the  winter  immensely,"  I  persisted 
when  they  were  a  little  quieter ;  "  I  sleighed  and 
skated,  and  then  there  were  the  children,  and 
shelves  and  shelves  full  of — "  I  was  going  to 
say  books,  but  stopped.  Reading  is  an  occupa- 
tion for  men ;  for  women  it  is  reprehensible  waste 
of  time.  And  how  could  I  talk  to  them  of  the 
happiness  I  felt  when  the  sun  shone  on  the  snow, 
or  of  the  deep  delight  of  hoar-frost  days  ? 

"  It  is  entirely  my  doing  that  we  have  come 
down  here,"  I  proceeded,  "and  my  husband 
only  did  it  to  please  me." 

"  Such  a  good  little  wife,"  repeated  the  patron- 
ising potentate,  again  patting  my  hand  with  an  air 
of  understanding  all  about  it,  "really  an  excellent 
little  wife.  But  you  must  not  let  your  husband 
have  his  own  way  too  much,  my  dear,  and  take 
my  advice  and  insist  on  his  bringing  you  to  town 
next  winter." 


34  ELIZABETH  AND 

And  then  they  fell  to  talking  about  their 
cooks,  having  settled  to  their  entire  satisfaction 
that  my  fate  was  probably  lying  in  wait  for  me 
too,  lurking  perhaps  at  that  very  moment  behind 
the  apparently  harmless  brass  buttons  of  the  man 
in  the  hall  with  my  cloak. 

I  laughed  on  the  way  home,  and  I  laughed 
again  for  sheer  satisfaction  when  we  reached  the 
garden  and  drove  between  the  quiet  trees  to 
the  pretty  old  house ;  and  when  I  went  into 
the  library,  with  its  four  windows  open  to  the 
moonlight  and  the  scent,  and  looked  round  at 
the  familiar  bookshelves,  and  could  hear  no 
sounds  but  sounds  of  peace,  and  knew  that  here 
I  might  read  or  dream  or  idle  exactly  as  I  chose 
with  never  a  creature  to  disturb  me,  how  grateful 
I  felt  to  the  kindly  Fate  that  has  brought  me 
here  and  given  me  a  heart  to  understand  my  own 
blessedness,  and  rescued  me  from  a  life  like  that 
I  had  just  seen  —  a  life  spent  with  the  odours  of 
other  people's  dinners  in  one's  nostrils,  and  the 
noise  of  their  wrangling  servants  in  one's  ears, 
and  parties  and  tattle  for  all  amusement. 

But  I  must  confess  to  having  felt  sometimes 
quite  crushed  when  some  grand  person,  examin- 
ing the  details  of  my  home  through  her  eyeglass, 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  35 

and  coolly  dissecting  all  that  I  so  much  prize 
from  the  convenient  distance  of  the  open  window, 
has  finished  up  by  expressing  sympathy  with  my 
loneliness,  and  on  my  protesting  that  I  like  it, 
has  murmured,  "sebr  ansprucbslos."  Then  indeed 
I  have  felt  ashamed  of  the  fewness  of  my  wants ; 
but  only  for  a  moment,  and  only  under  the 
withering  influence  of  the  eyeglass ;  for,  after  all, 
the  owner's  spirit  is  the  same  spirit  as  that  which 
dwells  in  my  servants  —  girls  whose  one  idea  of 
happiness  is  to  live  in  a  town  where  there  are 
others  of  their  sort  with  whom  to  drink  beer  and 
dance  on  Sunday  afternoons.  The  passion  for 
being  for  ever  with  one's  fellows,  and  the  fear  of 
being  left  for  a  few  hours  alone,  is  to  me  wholly 
incomprehensible.  I  can  entertain  myself  quite 
well  for  weeks  together,  hardly  aware,  except  for 
the  pervading  peace,  that  I  have  been  alone  at 
all.  Not  but  what  I  like  to  have  people  staying 
with  me  for  a  few  days,  or  even  for  a  few  weeks, 
should  they  be  as  ampruchslos  as  I  am  myself, 
and  content  with  simple  joys  ;  only,  any  one  who 
comes  here  and  would  be  happy  must  have  some- 
thing in  him ;  if  he  be  a  mere  blank  creature, 
empty  of  head  and  heart,  he  will  very  probably 
find  it  dull.  I  should  like  my  house  to  be  often 


36  ELIZABETH   AND 

full  if  I  could  find  people  capable  of  enjoying 
themselves.  They  should  be  welcomed  and 
sped  with  equal  heartiness ;  for  truth  compels 
me  to  confess  that,  though  it  pleases  me  to  see 
them  come,  it  pleases  me  just  as  much  to  see 
them  go. 

On  some  very  specially  divine  days,  like  to- 
day, I  have  actually  longed  for  some  one  else  to 
be  here  to  enjoy  the  beauty  with  me.  There 
has  been  rain  in  the  night,  and  the  whole  garden 
seems  to  be  singing  —  not  the  untiring  birds 
only,  but  the  vigorous  plants,  the  happy  grass 
and  trees,  the  lilac  bushes  —  oh,  those  lilac 
bushes !  They  are  all  out  to-day,  and  the 
garden  is  drenched  with  the  scent.  I  have 
brought  in  armfuls,  the  picking  is  such  a 
delight,  and  every  pot  and  bowl  and  tub  in 
the  house  is  filled  with  purple  glory,  and  the 
servants  think  there  is  going  to  be  a  party  and 
are  extra  nimble,  and  I  go  from  room  to  room 
gazing  at  the  sweetness,  and  the  windows  are  all 
flung  open  so  as  to  join  the  scent  within  to  the 
scent  without;  and  the  servants  gradually  dis- 
cover that  there  is  no  party,  and  wonder  why 
the  house  should  be  filled  with  flowers  for  one 
woman  by  herself,  and  I  long  more  and  more 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  37 

for  a  kindred  spirit  —  it  seems  so  greedy  to 
have  so  much  loveliness  to  oneself — but  kindred 
spirits  are  so  very,  very  rare ;  I  might  almost 
as  well  cry  for  the  moon.  It  is  true  that  my 
garden  is  full  of  friends,  only  they  are  —  dumb. 

June  3tt/.  —  This  is  such  an  out-of-the-way 
corner  of  the  world  that  it  requires  quite  unusual 
energy  to  get  here  at  all,  and  I  am  thus  deliv- 
ered from  casual  callers ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  people  I  love,  or  people  who  love  me, 
which  is  much  the  same  thing,  are  not  likely 
to  be  deterred  from  coming  by  the  roundabout 
train  journey  and  the  long  drive  at  the  end. 
Not  the  least  of  my  many  blessings  is  that  we 
have  only  one  neighbour.  If  you  have  to  have 
neighbours  at  all,  it  is  at  least  a  mercy  that  there 
should  be  only  one ;  for  with  people  dropping 
in  at  all  hours  and  wanting  to  talk  to  you,  how 
are  you  to  get  on  with  your  life,  I  should  like 
to  know,  and  read  your  books,  and  dream  your 
dreams  to  your  satisfaction  ?  Besides,  there  is 
always  the  certainty  that  either  you  or  the 
dropper-in  will  say  something  that  would  have 
been  better  left  unsaid,  and  I  have  a  holy  horror 
of  gossip  and  mischief-making.  A  woman's 


38  ELIZABETH   AND 

tongue  is  a  deadly  weapon  and  the  most  difficult 
thing  in  the  world  to  keep  in  order,  and  things 
slip  off  it  with  a  facility  nothing  short  of  appal- 
ling at  the  very  moment  when  it  ought  to  be 
most  quiet.  In  such  cases  the  only  safe  course 
is  to  talk  steadily  about  cooks  and  children,  and 
to  pray  that  the  visit  may  not  be  too  prolonged, 
for  if  it  is  you  are  lost.  Cooks  I  have  found 
to  be  the  best  of  all  subjects  —  the  most  phleg- 
matic flush  into  life  at  the  mere  word,  and  the 
joys  and  sufferings  connected  with  them  are 
experiences  common  to  us  all. 

Luckily,  our  neighbour  and  his  wife  are  both 
busy  and  charming,  with  a  whole  troop  of  flaxen- 
haired  little  children  to  keep  them  occupied, 
besides  the  business  of  their  large  estate.  Our 
intercourse  is  arranged  on  lines  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful simplicity.  I  call  on  her  once  a  year,  and 
she  returns  the  call  a  fortnight  later ;  they  ask  us 
to  dinner  in  the  summer,  and  we  ask  them  to 
dinner  in  the  winter.  By  strictly  keeping  to  this, 
we  avoid  all  danger  of  that  closer  friendship  which 
is  only  another  name  for  frequent  quarrels.  She 
is  a  pattern  of  what  a  German  country  lady  should 
be,  and  is  not  only  a  pretty  woman  but  an  ener- 
getic and  practical  one,  and  the  combination  is, 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  39 

to  say  the  least,  effective.  She  is  up  at  daylight 
superintending  the  feeding  of  the  stock,  the  but- 
ter-making, the  sending  off  of  the  milk  for  sale ; 
a  thousand  things  get  done  while  most  people  are 
fast  asleep,  and  before  lazy  folk  are  well  at  break- 
fast she  is  off  in  her  pony-carriage  to  the  other 
farms  on  the  place,  to  rate  the  "  mamsells,"  as  the 
head  women  are  called,  to  poke  into  every  corner, 
lift  the  lids  off  the  saucepans,  count  the  new-laid 
eggs,  and  box,  if  necessary,  any  careless  dairy- 
maid's ears.  We  are  allowed  by  law  to  adminis- 
ter "  slight  corporal  punishment "  to  our  ser- 
vants, it  being  left  entirely  to  individual  taste 
to  decide  what  "slight"  shall  be,  and  my  neigh- 
bour really  seems  to  enjoy  using  this  privilege, 
judging  from  the  way  she  talks  about  it.  I  would 
give  much  to  be  able  to  peep  through  a  keyhole 
and  see  the  dauntless  little  lady,  terrible  in  her 
wrath  and  dignity,  standing  on  tiptoe  to  box  the 
ears  of  some  great  strapping  girl  big  enough  to 
eat  her. 

The  making  of  cheese  and  butter  and  sausages 
excellently  well  is  a  work  which  requires  brains,  and 
is,  to  my  thinking,  a  very  admirable  form  of  activ- 
ity, and  entirely  worthy  of  the  attention  of  the 
intelligent.  That  my  neighbour  is  intelligent  is 


40  ELIZABETH   AND 

at  once  made  evident  by  the  bright  alertness  of 
her  eyes  —  eyes  that  nothing  escapes,  and  that 
only  gain  in  prettiness  by  being  used  to  some 
good  purpose.  She  is  a  recognised  authority  for 
miles  around  on  the  mysteries  of  sausage-making, 
the  care  of  calves,  and  the  slaughtering  of  swine  ; 
and  with  all  her  manifold  duties  and  daily  pro- 
longed absences  from  home,  her  children  are 
patterns  of  health  and  neatness,  and  of  what  dear 
little  German  children,  with  white  pigtails  and 
fearless  eyes  and  thick  legs,  should  be.  Who 
shall  say  that  such  a  life  is  sordid  and  dull  and 
unworthy  of  a  high  order  of  intelligence  ?  I 
protest  that  to  me  it  is  a  beautiful  life,  full  of 
wholesome  outdoor  work,  and  with  no  room  for 
those  listless  moments  of  depression  and  bore- 
dom, and  of  wondering  what  you  will  do  next, 
that  leave  wrinkles  round  a  pretty  woman's  eyes, 
and  are  not  unknown  even  to  the  most  brilliant. 
But  while  admiring  my  neighbour,  I  don't  think 
I  shall  ever  try  to  follow  in  her  steps,  my  talents 
not  being  of  the  energetic  and  organising  variety, 
but  rather  of  that  order  which  makes  their  owner 
almost  lamentably  prone  to  take  up  a  volume  of 
poetry  and  wander  out  to  where  the  kingcups 
grow,  and,  sitting  on  a  willow  trunk  beside  a  little 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  41 

stream,  forget  the  very  existence  of  everything  but 
green  pastures  and  still  waters,  and  the  glad  blow- 
ing of  the  wind  across  the  joyous  fields.  And 
it  would  make  me  perfectly  wretched  to  be  con- 
fronted by  ears  so  refractory  as  to  require  boxing. 
Sometimes  callers  from  a  distance  invade  my 
solitude,  and  it  is  on  these  occasions  that  I  realise 
how  absolutely  alone  each  individual  is,  and  how 
far  away  from  his  neighbour ;  and  while  they 
talk  (generally  about  babies,  past,  present,  and  to 
come),  I  fall  to  wondering  at  the  vast  and  impas- 
sable distance  that  separates  one's  own  soul  from 
the  soul  of  the  person  sitting  in  the  next  chain 
I  am  speaking  of  comparative  strangers,  people 
who  are  forced  to  stay  a  certain  time  by  the 
eccentricities  of  trains,  and  in  whose  presence  you 
grope  about  after  common  interests  and  shrink 
back  into  your  shell  on  finding  that  you  have 
none.  Then  a  frost  slowly  settles  down  on  me 
and  I  grow  each  minute  more  benumbed  and 
speechless,  and  the  babies  feel  the  frost  in  the  air 
and  look  vacant,  and  the  callers  go  through  the 
usual  form  of  wondering  who  they  most  take  after, 
generally  settling  the  question  by  saying  that  the 
May  baby,  who  is  the  beauty,  is  like  her  father, 
and  that  the  two  more  or  less  plain  ones  are  the 


42  ELIZABETH   AND 

image  of  me,  and  this  decision,  though  I  know  it 
of  old  and  am  sure  it  is  coming,  never  fails  to 
depress  me  as  much  as  though  I  heard  it  for  the 
first  time.  The  babies  are  very  little  and  inoffen- 
sive and  good,  and  it  is  hard  that  they  should  be 
used  as  a  means  of  filling  up  gaps  in  conversa- 
tion, and  their  features  pulled  to  pieces  one  by 
one,  and  all  their  weak  points  noted  and  criti- 
cised, while  they  stand  smiling  shyly  in  the 
operator's  face,  their  very  smile  drawing  forth 
comments  on  the  shape  of  their  mouths ;  but, 
after  all,  it  does  not  occur  very  often,  and  they 
are  one  of  those  few  interests  one  has  in  common 
with  other  people,  as  everybody  seems  to  have 
babies.  A  garden,  I  have  discovered,  is  by  no 
means  a  fruitful  topic,  and  it  is  amazing  how  few 
persons  really  love  theirs  —  they  all  pretend  they 
do,  but  you  can  hear  by  the  very  tone  of  their 
voice  what  a  lukewarm  affection  it  is.  About 
June  their  interest  is  at  its  warmest,  nourished 
by  agreeable  supplies  of  strawberries  and  roses ; 
but  on  reflection  I  don't  know  a  single  person 
within  twenty  miles  who  really  cares  for  his  garden, 
or  has  discovered  the  treasures  of  happiness  that 
are  buried  in  it,  and  are  to  be  found  if  sought  for 
diligently,  and  if  needs  be  with  tears. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  43 

It  is  after  these  rare  calls  that  I  experience  the 
only  moments  of  depression  from  which  I  ever 
suffer,  and  then  I  am  angry  at  myself,  a  well- 
nourished  person,  for  allowing  even  a  single 
precious  hour  of  life  to  be  spoilt  by  anything  so 
indifferent.  That  is  the  worst  of  being  fed  enough, 
and  clothed  enough,  and  warmed  enough,  and  of 
having  everything  you  can  reasonably  desire  — 
on  the  least  provocation  you  are  made  uncom- 
fortable and  unhappy  by  such  abstract  discomforts 
as  being  shut  out  from  a  nearer  approach  to  your 
neighbour's  soul ;  which  is  on  the  face  of  it  fool- 
ish, the  probability  being  that  he  hasn't  got  one. 

The  rockets  are  all  out.  The  gardener,  in  a  fit 
of  inspiration,  put  them  right  along  the  very  front 
of  two  borders,  and  I  don't  know  what  his  feel- 
ings can  be  now  that  they  are  all  flowering  and 
the  plants  behind  are  completely  hidden ;  but  I 
have  learned  another  lesson,  and  no  future  gar- 
dener shall  be  allowed  to  run  riot  among  my  rock- 
ets in  quite  so  reckless  a  fashion.  They  are 
charming  things,  as  delicate  in  colour  as  in  scent, 
and  a  bowl  of  them  on  my  writing-table  fills  the 
room  with  fragrance.  Single  rows,  however,  are 
a  mistake  •,  I  had  masses  of  them  planted  in  the 
grass,  and  these  show  how  lovely  they  can  be. 


44  ELIZABETH    AND 

A  border  full  of  rockets,  mauve  and  white,  and 
nothing  else,  must  be  beautiful ;  but  I  don't  know 
how  long  they  last  nor  what  they  look  like  when 
they  have  done  flowering.  This  I  shall  find  out 
in  a  week  or  two,  I  suppose.  Was  ever  a  would- 
be  gardener  left  so  entirely  to  his  own  blunder- 
ing ?  No  doubt  it  would  be  a  gain  of  years  to 
the  garden  if  I  were  not  forced  to  learn  solely  by 
my  failures,  and  if  I  had  some  kind  creature  to 
tell  me  when  to  do  things.  At  present  the  only 
flowers  in  the  garden  are  the  rockets,  the  pansies 
in  the  rose  beds,  and  two  groups  of  azaleas  — 
mollis  and  pontica.  The  azaleas  have  been  and 
still  are  gorgeous  ;  I  only  planted  them  this  spring 
and  they  almost  at  once  began  to  flower,  and  the 
sheltered  corner  they  are  in  looks  as  though  it 
were  filled  with  imprisoned  and  perpetual  sunsets. 
Orange,  lemon,  pink  in  every  delicate  shade  — 
what  they  will  be  next  year  and  in  succeeding 
years  when  the  bushes  are  bigger,  I  can  imagine 
from  the  way  they  have  begun  life.  On  gray, 
dull  days  the  effect  is  absolutely  startling.  Next 
autumn  I  shall  make  a  great  bank  of  them  in 
front  of  a  belt  of  fir  trees  in  rather  a  gloomy 
nook.  My  tea-roses  are  covered  with  buds  which 
will  not  open  for  at  least  another  week,  so  I  con- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  45 

elude  this  is  not  the  sort  of  climate  where  they 
will  flower  from  the  very  beginning  of  June  to 
November,  as  they  are  said  to  do. 

July  \\tb.  —  There  has  been  no  rain  since  the 
day  before  Whitsunday,  five  weeks  ago,  which 
partly,  but  not  entirely,  accounts  for  the  disap- 
pointment my  beds  have  been.  The  dejected 
gardener  went  mad  soon  after  Whitsuntide,  and 
had  to  be  sent  to  an  asylum.  He  took  to  going 
about  with  a  spade  in  one  hand  and  a  revolver  in 
the  other,  explaining  that  he  felt  safer  that  way, 
and  we  bore  it  quite  patiently,  as  becomes  civilised 
beings  who  respect  each  other's  prejudices,  until 
one  day,  when  I  mildly  asked  him  to  tie  up  a  fallen 
creeper  —  and  after  he  bought  the  revolver  my 
tones  in  addressing  him  were  of  the  mildest,  and 
I  quite  left  off  reading  to  him  aloud  —  he  turned 
round,  looked  me  straight  in  the  face  for  the  first 
time  since  he  has  been  here,  and  said,  "  Do  I  look 

like  Graf  X (a  great  local  celebrity),  or  like 

a  monkey  ?  "  After  which  there  was  nothing  for 
it  but  to  get  him  into  an  asylum  as  expeditiously 
as  possible.  There  was  no  gardener  to  be  had  in 
his  place,  and  I  have  only  just  succeeded  in  get- 
ting one ;  so  that  what  with  the  drought,  and  the 


46  ELIZABETH   AND 

neglect,  and  the  gardener's  madness,  and  my  blun- 
ders, the  garden  is  in  a  sad  condition ;  but  even 
in  a  sad  condition  it  is  the  dearest  place  in  the 
world,  and  all  my  mistakes  only  make  me  more 
determined  to  persevere. 

The  long  borders,  where  the  rockets  were,  are 
looking  dreadful.  The  rockets  have  done  flower- 
ing, and,  after  the  manner  of  rockets  in  other 
walks  of  life,  have  degenerated  into  sticks  ;  and 
nothing  else  in  those  borders  intends  to  bloom 
this  summer.  The  giant  poppies  I  had  planted 
out  in  them  in  April  have  either  died  off  or  re- 
mained quite  small,  and  so  have  the  columbines ; 
here  and  there  a  delphinium  droops  unwillingly, 
and  that  is  all.  I  suppose  poppies  cannot  stand 
being  moved,  or  perhaps  they  were  not  watered 
enough  at  the  time  of  transplanting ;  anyhow, 
those  borders  are  going  to  be  sown  to-morrow 
with  more  poppies  for  next  year ;  for  poppies  I 
will  have,  whether  they  like  it  or  not,  and  they 
shall  not  be  touched,  only  thinned  out. 

Well,  it  is  no  use  being  grieved,  and  after  all, 
directly  I  come  out  and  sit  under  the  trees,  and 
look  at  the  dappled  sky,  and  see  the  sunshine  on 
the  cornfields  away  on  the  plain,  all  the  disappoint- 
ment smooths  itself  out,  and  it  seems  impossible 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  47 

to  be  sad  and  discontented  when  everything  about 
me  is  so  radiant  and  kind. 

To-day  is  Sunday,  and  the  garden  is  so  quiet, 
that,  sitting  here  in  this  shady  corner  watching  the 
lazy  shadows  stretching  themselves  across  the  grass, 
and  listening  to  the  rooks  quarrelling  in  the  tree- 
tops,  I  almost  expect  to  hear  English  church  bells 
ringing  for  the  afternoon  service.  But  the  church 
is  three  miles  off,  has  no  bells,  and  no  afternoon 
service.  Once  a  fortnight  we  go  to  morning  prayer 
at  eleven  and  sit  up  in  a  sort  of  private  box  with 
a  room  behind,  whither  we  can  retire  unobserved 
when  the  sermon  is  too  long  or  our  flesh  too  weak, 
and  hear  ourselves  being  prayed  for  by  the  black- 
robed  parson.  In  winter  the  church  is  bitterly 
cold ;  it  is  not  heated,  and  we  sit  muffled  up  in 
more  furs  than  ever  we  wear  out  of  doors  ;  but  it 
would  of  course  be  very  wicked  for  the  parson  to 
wear  furs,  however  cold  he  may  be,  so  he  puts  on 
a  great  many  extra  coats  under  his  gown,  and,  as 
the  winter  progresses,  swells  to  a  prodigious  size. 
We  know  when  spring  is  coming  by  the  reduction 
in  his  figure.  The  congregation  sit  at  ease  while 
the  parson  does  the  praying  for  them,  and  while 
they  are  droning  the  long-drawn-out  chorales,  he 
retires  into  a  little  wooden  box  just  big  enough  to 


48  ELIZABETH   AND 

hold  him.  He  does  not  come  out  until  he  thinks 
we  have  sung  enough,  nor  do  we  stop  until  his 
appearance  gives  us  the  signal.  I  have  often 
thought  how  dreadful  it  would  be  if  he  fell  ill  in 
his  box  and  left  us  to  go  on  singing.  I  am  sure 
we  should  never  dare  to  stop,  unauthorised  by  the 
Church.  I  asked  him  once  what  he  did  in  there ; 
he  looked  very  shocked  at  such  a  profane  ques- 
tion, and  made  an  evasive  reply. 

If  it  were  not  for  the  garden,  a  German  Sun- 
day would  be  a  terrible  day ;  but  in  the  garden 
on  that  day  there  is  a  sigh  of  relief  and  more 
profound  peace,  nobody  raking  or  sweeping  or 
fidgeting ;  only  the  little  flowers  themselves  and 
the  whispering  trees. 

I  have  been  much  afflicted  again  lately  by 
visitors  —  not  stray  callers  to  be  got  rid  of  after 
a  due  administration  of  tea  and  things  you  are 
sorry  afterwards  that  you  said,  but  people  stay- 
ing in  the  house  and  not  to  be  got  rid  of  at  all. 
All  June  was  lost  to  me  in  this  way,  and  it  was 
from  first  to  last  a  radiant  month  of  heat  and 
beauty ;  but  a  garden  where  you  meet  the  people 
you  saw  at  breakfast,  and  will  see  again  at  lunch 
and  dinner,  is  not  a  place  to  be  happy  in.  Be- 
sides, they  had  a  knack  of  finding  out  my  favour 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  49 

ite  seats  and  lounging  in  them  just  when  I  longed 
to  lounge  myself;  and  they  took  books  out  of 
the  library  with  them,  and  left  them  face  down- 
wards on  the  seats  all  night  to  get  well  drenched 
with  dew,  though  they  might  have  known  that 
what  is  meat  for  roses  is  poison  for  books ;  and 
they  gave  me  to  understand  that  if  they  had  had 
the  arranging  of  the  garden  it  would  have  been 
finished  long  ago  —  whereas  I  don't  believe  a 
garden  ever  is  finished.  They  have  all  gone 
now,  thank  heaven,  except  one,  so  that  I  have 
a  little  breathing  space  before  others  begin  to 
arrive.  It  seems  that  the  place  interests  people, 
and  that  there  is  a  sort  of  novelty  in  staying  in 
such  a  deserted  corner  of  the  world,  for  they 
were  in  a  perpetual  state  of  mild  amusement  at 
being  here  at  all. 

Irais  is  the  only  one  left.  She  is  a  young 
woman  with  a  beautiful,  refined  face,  and  her 
eyes  and  straight,  fine  eyebrows  are  particularly 
lovable.  At  meals  she  dips  her  bread  into  the 
salt-cellar,  bites  a  bit  off,  and  repeats  the  process, 
although  providence  (taking  my  shape)  has  caused 
salt-spoons  to  be  placed  at  convenient  intervals 
down  the  table.  She  lunched  to-day  on  beer, 
Scbweine-koteletten,  and  cabbage-salad  with  cara- 


50  ELIZABETH   AND 

way  seeds  in  it,  and  now  I  hear  her  through  the 
open  window,  extemporising  touching  melodies 
in  her  charming,  cooing  voice.  She  is  thin,  frail, 
intelligent,  and  lovable,  all  on  the  above  diet. 
What  better  proof  can  be  needed  to  establish  the 
superiority  of  the  Teuton  than  the  fact  that  after 
such  meals  he  can  produce  such  music  ?  Cabbage- 
salad  is  a  horrid  invention,  but  I  don't  doubt 
its  utility  as  a  means  of  encouraging  thoughtful- 
ness  ;  nor  will  I  quarrel  with  it,  since  it  results 
so  poetically,  any  more  than  I  quarrel  with  the 
manure  that  results  in  roses,  and  I  give  it  to 
Irais  every  day  to  make  her  sing.  She  is  the 
sweetest  singer  I  have  ever  heard,  and  has  a 
charming  trick  of  making  up  songs  as  she  goes 
along.  When  she  begins,  I  go  and  lean  out  of 
the  window  and  look  at  my  little  friends  out 
there  in  the  borders  while  listening  to  her  music, 
and  feel  full  of  pleasant  sadness  and  regret.  It 
is  so  sweet  to  be  sad  when  one  has  nothing  to 
be  sad  about. 

The  April  baby  came  panting  up  just  as  I  had 
written  that,  the  others  hurrying  along  behind, 
and  with  flaming  cheeks  displayed  for  my  admira- 
tion three  brand-new  kittens,  lean  and  blind, 
that  she  was  carrying  in  her  pinafore,  and  that 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  51 

had  just  been  found  motherless  in  the  wood- 
shed. 

"Look,"  she  cried  breathlessly,  "such  a  much! " 

I  was  glad  it  was  only  kittens  this  time,  for 
she  had  been  once  before  this  afternoon  on  pur- 
pose, as  she  informed  me,  sitting  herself  down  on 
the  grass  at  my  feet,  to  ask  about  the  lieber  Goft, 
it  being  Sunday  and  her  pious  little  nurse's  con- 
versation having  run,  as  it  seems,  on  heaven  and 
angels. 

Her  questions  about  the  lieber  Gott  are  better 
left  unrecorded,  and  I  was  relieved  when  she 
began  about  the  angels. 

"  What  do  they  wear  for  clothes  ?  "  she  asked 
in  her  German-English. 

"  Why,  you've  seen  them  in  pictures,"  I 
answered,  "in  beautiful,  long  dresses,  and  with 
big,  white  wings." 

"  Feathers  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  suppose  so,  —  and  long  dresses,  all  white 
and  beautiful." 

"  Are  they  girlies  ?  " 

"  Girls  ?     Ye— es." 

"  Don't  boys  go  into  the  Himmel?  " 

"  Yes,  of  course,  if  they're  good." 

"  And  then  what  do  they  wear  ?  " 


52  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  Why,  the  same  as  all  the  other  angels,  I 
suppose." 

"Dwesses?" 

She  began  to  laugh,  looking  at  me  sideways 
as  though  she  suspected  me  of  making  jokes. 
"  What  a  funny  Mummy !  "  she  said,  evidently 
much  amused.  She  has  a  fat  little  laugh  that  is 
very  infectious. 

"  I  think,"  said  I,  gravely,  "  you  had  better  go 
and  play  with  the  other  babies." 

She  did  not  answer,  and  sat  still  a  moment 
watching  the  clouds.  I  began  writing  again. 

"  Mummy,"  she  said  presently. 

"Well?" 

"  Where  do  the  angels  get  their  dwesses  ? " 

I  hesitated.     "From  lie  her  Gott"  I  said. 

"Are  there  shops  in  the  Himmel?  " 

"Shops?     No." 

"  But,  then,  where  does  lieber  Gott  buy  their 
dwesses  ?  " 

"  Now  run  away  like  a  good  baby  ;  I'm  busy." 

"  But  you  said  yesterday,  when  I  asked  about 
lieber  Gott,  that  you  would  tell  about  Him  on 
Sunday,  and  it  is  Sunday.  Tell  me  a  story  about 
Him." 

There  was  nothing  for  it  but  resignation,  so  I 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  53 

put  down  my  pencil  with  a  sigh.  "  Call  the 
others,  then." 

She  ran  away,  and  presently  they  all  three 
emerged  from  the  bushes  one  after  the  other,  and 
tried  all  together  to  scramble  on  to  my  knee. 
The  April  baby  got  the  knee  as  she  always  seems 
to  get  everything,  and  the  other  two  had  to  sit 
on  the  grass. 

I  began  about  Adam  and  Eve,  with  an  eye  to 
future  parsonic  probings.  The  April  baby's  eyes 
opened  wider  and  wider,  and  her  face  grew  redder 
and  redder.  I  was  surprised  at  the  breathless 
interest  she  took  in  the  story  —  the  other  two 
were  tearing  up  tufts  of  grass  and  hardly  listening. 
I  had  scarcely  got  to  the  angels  with  the  flaming 
swords  and  announced  that  that  was  all,  when  she 
burst  out,  "  Now  /'//  tell  about  it.  Once  upon  a 
time  there  was  Adam  and  Eva,  and  they  had 
plenty  of  clothes,  and  there  was  no  snake,  and 
lieber  Gott  wasn't  angry  with  them,  and  they 
could  eat  as  many  apples  as  they  liked,  and  was 
happy  for  ever  and  ever  —  there  now !  " 

She  began  to  jump  up  and  down  defiantly  on 
my  knee. 

"  But  that's  not  the  story,"  I  said  rather 
helplessly. 


54  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  Yes,  yes  !  It's  a  much  nicelier  one  !  Now 
another." 

"  But  these  stories  are  true"  I  said  severely  ; 
"  and  it's  no  use  my  telling  them  if  you  make 
them  up  your  own  way  afterwards." 

"  Another  !  another  !  "  she  shrieked,  jumping 
up  and  down  with  redoubled  energy,  all  her 
silvery  curls  flying. 

I  began  about  Noah  and  the  flood. 

"  Did  it  rain  so  badly  ?  "  she  asked  with  a  face 
of  the  deepest  concern  and  interest. 

"  Yes,  all  day  long  and  all  night  long  for  weeks 
and  weeks  -  " 

"  And  was  everybody  so  wet  ?  " 


"  But  why  didn't  they  open  their  umbwellas  ?  " 

Just  then  I  saw  the  nurse  coming  out  with  the 
tea-tray. 

"  I'll  tell  you  the  rest  another  time,"  I  said, 
putting  her  off  my  knee,  greatly  relieved  ;  "  you 
must  all  go  to  Anna  now  and  have  tea." 

"  I  don't  like  Anna,"  remarked  the  June  baby, 
not  having  hitherto  opened  her  lips  ;  "  she  is  a 
stupid  girl." 

The  other  two  stood  transfixed  with  horror  at 
this  statement,  for,  besides  being  naturally  ex- 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  55 

tremely  polite,  and  at  all  times  anxious  not  to 
hurt  any  one's  feelings,  they  had  been  brought  up 
to  love  and  respect  their  kind  little  nurse. 

The  April  baby  recovered  her  speech  first,  and 
lifting  her  finger,  pointed  it  at  the  criminal  in  just 
indignation.  "Such  a  child  will  never  go  into  the 
Himmel,"  she  said  with  great  emphasis,  and  the 
air  of  one  who  delivers  judgment. 

September  i$th. — This  is  the  month  of  quiet 
days,  crimson  creepers,  and  blackberries  ;  of  mel- 
low afternoons  in  the  ripening  garden ;  of  tea 
under  the  acacias  instead  of  the  too  shady  beeches; 
of  wood-fires  in  the  library  in  the  chilly  evenings. 
The  babies  go  out  in  the  afternoon  and  black- 
berry in  the  hedges ;  the  three  kittens,  grown  big 
and  fat,  sit  cleaning  themselves  on  the  sunny 
verandah  steps  ;  the  Man  of  Wrath  shoots  par- 
tridges across  the  distant  stubble ;  and  the  summer 
seems  as  though  it  would  dream  on  for  ever.  It 
is  hard  to  believe  that  in  three  months  we  shall 
probably  be  snowed  up  and  certainly  be  cold. 
There  is  a  feeling  about  this  month  that  reminds 
me  of  March  and  the  early  days  of  April,  when 
spring  is  still  hesitating  on  the  threshold  and  the 
garden  holds  its  breath  in  expectation.  There  is 


56  ELIZABETH   AND 

the  same  mildness  in  the  air,  and  the  sky  and 
grass  have  the  same  look  as  then  ;  but  the  leaves 
tell  a  different  tale,  and  the  reddening  creeper  on 
the  house  is  rapidly  approaching  its  last  and 
loveliest  glory. 

My  roses  have  behaved  as  well  on  the  whole 
as  was  to  be  expected,  and  the  Viscountess  Folke- 
stones  and  Laurette  Messimys  have  been  most 
beautiful,  the  latter  being  quite  the  loveliest  things 
in  the  garden,  each  flower  an  exquisite  loose 
cluster  of  coral-pink  petals,  paling  at  the  base 
to  a  yellow-white.  I  have  ordered  a  hundred 
standard  tea-roses  for  planting  next  month,  half 
of  which  are  Viscountess  Folkestones,  because  the 
tea-roses  have  such  a  way  of  hanging  their  little 
heads  that  one  has  to  kneel  down  to  be  able  to 
see  them  well  in  the  dwarf  forms  —  not  but  what 
I  entirely  approve  of  kneeling  before  such  perfect 
beauty,  only  it  dirties  one's  clothes.  So  I  am 
going  to  put  standards  down  each  side  of  the 
walk  under  the  south  windows,  and  shall  have 
the  flowers  on  a  convenient  level  for  worship. 
My  only  fear  is,  that  they  will  stand  the  winter 
less  well  than  the  dwarf  sorts,  being  so  difficult  to 
pack  up  snugly.  The  Persian  Yellows  and  Bicol- 
ors  have  been,  as  I  predicted,  a  mistake  among 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  57 

the  tea-roses;  they  only  flower  twice  in  the  season 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  time  look  dull  and 
moping ;  and  then  the  Persian  Yellows  have  such 
an  odd  smell  and  so  many  insects  inside  them 
eating  them  up.  I  have  ordered  Safrano  tea- 
roses  to  put  in  their  place,  as  they  all  come  out 
next  month  and  are  to  be  grouped  in  the  grass ; 
and  the  semicircle  being  immediately  under  the 
windows,  besides  having  the  best  position  in  the 
place,  must  be  reserved  solely  for  my  choicest 
treasures.  I  have  had  a  great  many  disappoint- 
ments, but  feel  as  though  I  were  really  beginning 
to  learn.  Humility,  and  the  most  patient  perse- 
verance, seem  almost  as  necessary  in  gardening  as 
rain  and  sunshine,  and  every  failure  must  be  used 
as  a  stepping-stone  to  something  better. 

I  had  a  visitor  last  week  who  knows  a  great 
deal  about  gardening  and  has  had  much  practi- 
cal experience.  When  I  heard  he  was  coming, 
I  felt  I  wanted  to  put  my  arms  right  round  my 
garden  and  hide  it  from  him ;  but  what  was  my 
surprise  and  delight  when  he  said,  after  having 
gone  all  over  it,  "  Well,  I  think  you  have  done 
wonders."  Dear  me,  how  pleased  I  was !  It 
was  so  entirely  unexpected,  and  such  a  complete 
novelty  after  the  remarks  I  have  been  listening 


58  ELIZABETH   AND 

to  all  the  summer.  I  could  have  hugged  that 
discerning  and  indulgent  critic,  able  to  look 
beyond  the  result  to  the  intention,  and  appreciat- 
ing the  difficulties  of  every  kind  that  had  been  in 
the  way.  After  that  I  opened  my  heart  to  him, 
and  listened  reverently  to  all  he  had  to  say,  and 
treasured  up  his  kind  and  encouraging  advice, 
and  wished  he  could  stay  here  a  whole  year  and 
help  me  through  the  seasons.  But  he  went,  as 
people  one  likes  always  do  go,  and  he  was  the 
only  guest  I  have  had  whose  departure  made  me 
sorry. 

The  people  I  love  are  always  somewhere  else 
and  not  able  to  come  to  me,  while  I  can  at  any 
time  fill  the  house  with  visitors  about  whom  I 
know  little  and  care  less.  Perhaps,  if  I  saw  more 
of  those  absent  ones,  I  would  not  love  them  so 
well  —  at  least,  that  is  what  I  think  on  wet  days 
when  the  wind  is  howling  round  the  house  and 
all  nature  is  overcome  with  grief;  and  it  has 
actually  happened  once  or  twice  when  great 
friends  have  been  staying  with  me  that  I  have 
wished,  when  they  left,  I  might  not  see  them 
again  for  at  least  ten  years.  I  suppose  the  fact 
is,  that  no  friendship  can  stand  the  breakfast 
test,  and  here,  in  the  country,  we  invariably 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  59 

think  it  our  duty  to  appear  at  breakfast.  Civili- 
sation has  done  away  with  curl-papers,  yet  at 
that  hour  the  soul  of  the  Hausfrau  is  as  tightly 
screwed  up  in  them  as  was  ever  her  grand- 
mother's hair  ;  and  though  my  body  comes  down 
mechanically,  having  been  trained  that  way  by 
punctual  parents,  my  soul  never  thinks  of  begin- 
ning to  wake  up  for  other  people  till  lunch-time, 
and  never  does  so  completely  till  it  has  been 
taken  out  of  doors  and  aired  in  the  sunshine. 
Who  can  begin  conventional  amiability  the  first 
thing  in  the  morning  ?  It  is  the  hour  of  savage 
instincts  and  natural  tendencies  ;  it  is  the  triumph 
of  the  Disagreeable  and  the  Cross.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  the  Muses  and  the  Graces  never 
thought  of  having  breakfast  anywhere  but  in  bed. 

November  nth.  —  When  the  gray  November 
weather  came,  and  hung  its  soft  dark  clouds  low 
and  unbroken  over  the  brown  of  the  ploughed 
fields  and  the  vivid  emerald  of  the  stretches  of 
winter  corn,  the  heavy  stillness  weighed  my  heart 
down  to  a  forlorn  yearning  after  the  pleasant 
things  of  childhood,  the  petting,  the  comforting, 
the  warming  faith  in  the  unfailing  wisdom  of 
elders.  A  great  need  of  something  to  lean  on,  and 


60  ELIZABETH   AND 

a  great  weariness  of  independence  and  responsi- 
bility took  possession  of  my  soul ;  and  looking 
round  for  support  and  comfort  in  that  transitory 
mood,  the  emptiness  of  the  present  and  the 
blankness  of  the  future  sent  me  back  to  the 
past  with  all  its  ghosts.  Why  should  I  not  go 
and  see  the  place  where  I  was  born,  and  where 
I  lived  so  long ;  the  place  where  I  was  so  magnifi- 
cently happy,  so  exquisitely  wretched,  so  close 
to  heaven,  so  near  to  hell,  always  either  up  on 
a  cloud  of  glory,  or  down  in  the  depths  with 
the  waters  of  despair  closing  over  my  head  ? 
Cousins  live  in  it  now,  distant  cousins,  loved 
with  the  exact  measure  of  love  usually  bestowed 
on  cousins  who  reign  in  one's  stead ;  cousins  of 
practical  views,  who  have  dug  up  the  flower-beds 
and  planted  cabbages  where  roses  grew ;  and 
though  through  all  the  years  since  my  father's 
death  I  have  held  my  head  so  high  that  it  hurt, 
and  loftily  refused  to  listen  to  their  repeated 
suggestions  that  I  should  revisit  my  old  home, 
something  in  the  sad  listlessness  of  the  Novem- 
ber days  sent  my  spirit  back  to  old  times  with 
a  persistency  that  would  not  be  set  aside,  and  I 
woke  from  my  musings  surprised  to  find  myself 
sick  with  longing. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  61 

It  is  foolish  but  natural  to  quarrel  with  one's 
cousins,  and  especially  foolish  and  natural  when 
they  have  done  nothing,  and  are  mere  victims 
of  chance.  Is  it  their  fault  that  my  not  being 
a  boy  placed  the  shoes  I  should  otherwise  have 
stepped  into  at  their  disposal?  I  know  it  is 
not ;  but  their  blamelessness  does  not  make  me 
love  them  more.  "  Nocb  ein  dummes  Frauen- 
zimmer !  "  cried  my  father,  on  my  arrival  into 
the  world  —  he  had  three  of  them  already,  and 
I  was  his  last  hope, — and  a  dummes  Frauenzimmer 
I  have  remained  ever  since ;  and  that  is  why  for 
years  I  would  have  no  dealings  with  the  cousins  in 
possession,  and  that  is  why,  the  other  day,  over- 
come by  the  tender  influence  of  the  weather,  the 
purely  sentimental  longing  to  join  hands  again 
with  my  childhood  was  enough  to  send  all  my 
pride  to  the  winds,  and  to  start  me  off  without 
warning  and  without  invitation  on  my  pilgrimage. 

I  have  always  had  a  liking  for  pilgrimages, 
and  if  I  had  lived  in  the  Middle  Ages  would  have 
spent  most  of  my  time  on  the  way  to  Rome. 
The  pilgrims,  leaving  all  their  cares  at  home,  the 
anxieties  of  their  riches  or  their  debts,  the  wife 
that  worried  and  the  children  that  disturbed, 
took  only  their  sins  with  them,  and  turning 


62  ELIZABETH   AND 

their  backs  on  their  obligations,  set  out  with 
that  sole  burden,  and  perhaps  a  cheerful  heart. 
How  cheerful  my  heart  would  have  been,  starting 
on  a  fine  morning,  with  the  smell  of  the  spring 
in  my  nostrils,  fortified  by  the  approval  of  those 
left  behind,  accompanied  by  the  pious  blessings 
of  my  family,  with  every  step  getting  farther  from 
the  suffocation  of  daily  duties,  out  into  the  wide 
fresh  world,  out  into  the  glorious  free  world,  so 
poor,  so  penitent,  and  so  happy  !  My  dream, 
even  now,  is  to  walk  for  weeks  with  some  friend 
that  I  love,  leisurely  wandering  from  place  to 
place,  with  no  route  arranged  and  no  object  in 
view,  with  liberty  to  go  on  all  day  or  to  linger 
all  day,  as  we  choose ;  but  the  question  of 
luggage,  unknown  to  the  simple  pilgrim,  is  one 
of  the  rocks  on  which  my  plans  have  been  ship- 
wrecked, and  the  other  is  the  certain  censure  of 
relatives,  who,  not  fond  of  walking  themselves, 
and  having  no  taste  for  noonday  naps  under 
hedges,  would  be  sure  to  paralyse  my  plans 
before  they  had  grown  to  maturity  by  the  honest 
horror  of  their  cry,  "  How  very  unpleasant  if 
you  were  to  meet  any  one  you  know  ! "  The 
relative  of  five  hundred  years  back  would  simply 
have  said,  "  How  holy  !  " 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  63 

My  father  had  the  same  liking  for  pilgrim- 
ages—  indeed,  it  is  evident  that  I  have  it  from 
him  —  and  he  encouraged  it  in  me  when  I  was  little, 
taking  me  with  him  on  his  pious  journeys  to  places 
he  had  lived  in  as  a  boy.  Often  have  we  been 
together  to  the  school  he  was  at  in  Brandenburg, 
and  spent  pleasant  days  wandering  about  the  old 
town  on  the  edge  of  one  of  those  lakes  that  lie 
in  a  chain  in  that  wide  green  plain ;  and  often 
have  we  been  in  Potsdam,  where  he  was 
quartered  as  a  lieutenant,  the  Potsdam  pilgrim- 
age including  hours  in  the  woods  around  and  in 
the  gardens  of  Sans  Souci,  with  the  second 
volume  of  Carlyle's  Frederick  under  my  father's 
arm ;  and  often  did  we  spend  long  summer  days 
at  the  house  in  the  Mark,  at  the  head  of  the 
same  blue  chain  of  lakes,  where  his  mother  spent 
her  young  years,  and  where,  though  it  belonged 
to  cousins,  like  everything  else  that  was  worth 
having,  we  could  wander  about  as  we  chose, 
for  it  was  empty,  and  sit  in  the  deep  windows 
of  rooms  where  there  was  no  furniture,  and  the 
painted  Venuses  and  cupids  on  the  ceiling  still 
smiled  irrelevantly  and  stretched  their  futile 
wreaths  above  the  emptiness  beneath.  And 
while  we  sat  and  rested,  my  father  told  me,  as 


64  ELIZABETH   AND 

my  grandmother  had  a  hundred  times  told  him, 
all  that  had  happened  in  those  rooms  in  the  far- 
off  days  when  people  danced  and  sang  and 
laughed  through  life,  and  nobody  seemed  ever 
to  be  old  or  sorry. 

There  was,  and  still  is,  an  inn  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  the  great  iron  gates,  with  two  very  old 
lime  trees  in  front  of  it,  where  we  used  to  lunch 
on  our  arrival  at  a  little  table  spread  with  a  red 
and  blue  check  cloth,  the  lime  blossoms  dropping 
into  our  soup,  and  the  bees  humming  in  the 
scented  shadows  overhead.  I  have  a  picture  of 
the  house  by  my  side  as  I  write,  done  from  the 
lake  in  old  times,  with  a  boat  full  of  ladies  in 
hoops  and  powder  in  the  foreground,  and  a  youth 
playing  a  guitar.  The  pilgrimages  to  this  place 
were  those  I  loved  the  best. 

But  the  stories  my  father  told  me,  sometimes 
odd  enough  stories  to  tell  a  little  girl,  as  we  wan- 
dered about  the  echoing  rooms,  or  hung  over  the 
stone  balustrade  and  fed  the  fishes  in  the  lake,  or 
picked  the  pale  dog-roses  in  the  hedges,  or  lay  in  the 
boat  in  a  shady  reed-grown  bay  while  he  smoked 
to  keep  the  mosquitoes  off,  were  after  all  only  tra- 
ditions, imparted  to  me  in  small  doses  from  time 
to  time,  when  his  earnest  desire  not  to  raise  his 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  65 

remarks  above  the  level  of  dulness  supposed  to 
be  wholesome  for  Eackfische  was  neutralised  by  an 
impulse  to  share  his  thoughts  with  somebody 
who  would  laugh  ;  whereas  the  place  I  was  bound 
for  on  my  latest  pilgrimage  was  filled  with  living, 
first-hand  memories  of  all  the  enchanted  years 
that  lie  between  two  and  eighteen.  How  en- 
chanted those  years  are  is  made  more  and  more 
clear  to  me  the  older  I  grow.  There  has  been 
nothing  in  the  least  like  them  since ;  and  though 
I  have  forgotten  most  of  what  happened  six 
months  ago,  every  incident,  almost  every  day  of 
those  wonderful  long  years  is  perfectly  distinct  in 
my  memory. 

But  I  had  been  stiffnecked,  proud,  unpleasant, 
altogether  cousinly  in  my  behaviour  towards  the 
people  in  possession.  The  invitations  to  revisit 
the  old  home  had  ceased.  The  cousins  had 
grown  tired  of  refusals,  and  had  left  me  alone. 
I  did  not  even  know  who  lived  in  it  now,  it  was 
so  long  since  I  had  had  any  news.  For  two  days 
I  fought  against  the  strong  desire  to  go  there  that 
had  suddenly  seized  me,  and  assured  myself  that 
I  would  not  go,  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  go, 
undignified,  sentimental,  and  silly,  that  I  did  not 
know  them  and  would  be  in  an  awkward  position, 


66  ELIZABETH   AND 

and  that  I  was  old  enough  to  know  better.  But 
who  can  foretell  from  one  hour  to  the  next  what 
a  woman  will  do  ?  And  when  does  she  ever  know 
better  ?  On  the  third  morning  I  set  out  as  hope- 
fully as  though  it  were  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world  to  fall  unexpectedly  upon  hitherto 
consistently  neglected  cousins,  and  expect  to  be 
received  with  open  arms. 

It  was  a  complicated  journey,  and  lasted  several 
hours.  During  the  first  part,  when  it  was  still 
dark,  I  glowed  with  enthusiasm,  with  the  spirit 
of  adventure,  with  delight  at  the  prospect  of  so 
soon  seeing  the  loved  place  again ;  and  thought 
with  wonder  of  the  long  years  I  had  allowed  to 
pass  since  last  I  was  there.  Of  what  I  should 
say  to  the  cousins,  and  of  how  I  should  introduce 
myself  into  their  midst,  I  did  not  think  at  all: 
the  pilgrim  spirit  was  upon  me,  the  unpractical 
spirit  that  takes  no  thought  for  anything,  but 
simply  wanders  along  enjoying  its  own  emotions. 
It  was  a  quiet,  sad  morning,  and  there  was  a 
thick  mist.  By  the  time  I  was  in  the  little  train 
on  the  light  railway  that  passed  through  the  vil- 
lage nearest  my  old  home,  I  had  got  over  my 
first  enthusiasm,  and  had  entered  the  stage  of 
critically  examining  the  changes  that  had  been 


HER    GERMAN   GARDEN  67 

made  in  the  last  ten  years.  It  was  so  misty  that 
I  could  see  nothing  of  the  familiar  country  from 
the  carriage  windows,  only  the  ghosts  of  pines  in 
the  front  row  of  the  forests  ;  but  the  railway 
itself  was  a  new  departure,  unknown  in  our  day, 
when  we  used  to  drive  over  ten  miles  of  deep, 
sandy  forest  roads  to  and  from  the  station,  and 
although  most  people  would  have  called  it  an  evi- 
dent and  great  improvement,  it  was  an  innovation 
due,  no  doubt,  to  the  zeal  and  energy  of  the 
reigning  cousin  ;  and  who  was  he,  thought  I, 
that  he  should  require  more  conveniences  than 
my  father  had  found  needful  ?  It  was  no  use 
my  telling  myself  that  in  my  father's  time  the  era 
of  light  railways  had  not  dawned,  and  that  if  it 
had,  we  should  have  done  our  utmost  to  secure 
one ;  the  thought  of  my  cousin,  stepping  into  my 
shoes,  and  then  altering  them,  was  odious  to  me. 
By  the  time  I  was  walking  up  the  hill  from  the 
station  I  had  got  over  this  feeling  too,  and  had 
entered  a  third  stage  of  wondering  uneasily  what 
in  the  world  I  should  do  next.  Where  was  the 
intrepid  courage  with  which  I  had  started  ?  At 
the  top  of  the  first  hill  I  sat  down  to  consider 
this  question  in  detail,  for  I  was  very  near  the 
house  now,  and  felt  I  wanted  time.  Where,  in- 


68  ELIZABETH   AND 

deed,  was  the  courage  and  joy  of  the  morning  ? 
It  had  vanished  so  completely  that  I  could  only 
suppose  that  it  must  be  lunch  time,  the  observa- 
tions of  years  having  led  to  the  discovery  that 
the  higher  sentiments  and  virtues  fly  affrighted 
on  the  approach  of  lunch,  and  none  fly  quicker 
than  courage.  So  I  ate  the  lunch  I  had  brought 
with  me,  hoping  that  it  was  what  I  wanted ;  but 
it  was  chilly,  made  up  of  sandwiches  and  pears, 
and  it  had  to  be  eaten  under  a  tree  at  the  edge 
of  a  field ;  and  it  was  November,  and  the  mist 
was  thicker  than  ever  and  very  wet —  the  grass 
was  wet  with  it,  the  gaunt  tree  was  wet  with  it, 
I  was  wet  with  it,  and  the  sandwiches  were  wet 
with  it.  Nobody's  spirits  can  keep  up  under 
such  conditions ;  and  as  I  ate  the  soaked  sand- 
wiches, I  deplored  the  headlong  courage  more 
with  each  mouthful  that  had  torn  me  from  a 
warm,  dry  home  where  I  was  appreciated,  and  had 
brought  me  first  to  the  damp  tree  in  the  damp 
field,  and  when  I  had  finished  my  lunch  and 
dessert  of  cold  pears,  was  going  to  drag  me  into 
the  midst  of  a  circle  of  unprepared  and  aston- 
ished cousins.  Vast  sheep  loomed  through  the 
mist  a  few  yards  off.  The  sheep  dog  kept  up 
a  perpetual,  irritating  yap.  In  the  fog  I  could 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  69 

hardly  tell  where  I  was,  though  I  knew  I  must 
have  played  there  a  hundred  times  as  a  child. 
After  the  fashion  of  woman  directly  she  is  not 
perfectly  warm  and  perfectly  comfortable,  I  began 
to  consider  the  uncertainty  of  human  life,  and  to 
shake  my  head  in  gloomy  approval  as  lugubri- 
ous lines  of  pessimistic  poetry  suggested  them- 
selves to  my  mind. 

Now  it  is  clearly  a  desirable  plan,  if  you  want 
to  do  anything,  to  do  it  in  the  way  consecrated 
by  custom,  more  especially  if  you  are  a  woman. 
The  rattle  of  a  carriage  along  the  road  just  behind 
me,  and  the  fact  that  I  started  and  turned  sud- 
denly hot,  drove  this  truth  home  to  my  soul. 
The  mist  hid  me,  and  the  carriage,  no  doubt  full 
of  cousins,  drove  on  in  the  direction  of  the  house  ; 
but  what  an  absurd  position  I  was  in  !  Suppose 
the  kindly  mist  had  lifted,  and  revealed  me  lunch- 
ing in  the  wet  on  their  property,  the  cousin  of  the 
short  and  lofty  letters,  the  unangenebme  Elisabeth  ! 
"  Die  war  doch  immer  verdrebt"  I  could  imagine 
them  hastily  muttering  to  each  other,  before 
advancing  wreathed  in  welcoming  smiles.  It 
gave  me  a  great  shock,  this  narrow  escape,  and 
I  got  on  to  my  feet  quickly,  and  burying  the 
remains  of  my  lunch  under  the  gigantic  molehil! 


70  ELIZABETH   AND 

on  which  I  had  been  sitting,  asked  myself  ner- 
vously what  I  proposed  to  do  next.  Should  I 
walk  back  to  the  village,  go  to  the  Gasthof,  write 
a  letter  craving  permission  to  call  on  my  cousins, 
and  wait  there  till  an  answer  came  ?  It  would  be 
a  discreet  and  sober  course  to  pursue ;  the  next 
best  thing  to  having  written  before  leaving  home. 
But  the  Gasthof  of  a  north  German  village  is  a 
dreadful  place,  and  the  remembrance  of  one  in 
which  I  had  taken  refuge  once  from  a  thunder- 
storm was  still  so  vivid  that  nature  itself  cried  out 
against  this  plan.  The  mist,  if  anything,  was 
growing  denser.  I  knew  every  path  and  gate  in 
the  place.  What  if  I  gave  up  all  hope  of  seeing 
the  house,  and  went  through  the  little  door 
in  the  wall  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  and 
confined  myself  for  this  once  to  that  ?  In  such 
weather  I  would  be  able  to  wander  round  as  I 
pleased,  without  the  least  risk  of  being  seen  by 
or  meeting  any  cousins,  and  it  was  after  all  the 
garden  that  lay  nearest  my  heart.  What  a 
delight  it  would  be  to  creep  into  it  unobserved, 
and  revisit  all  the  corners  I  so  well  remembered, 
and  slip  out  again  and  get  away  safely  without 
any  need  of  explanations,  assurances,  protesta- 
tions, displays  of  affection,  without  any  need,  in 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  71 

a  word,  of  that  exhausting  form  of  conversation, 
so  dear  to  relations,  known  as  Redensarten  ! 

The  mist  tempted  me.  I  think  if  it  had  been 
a  fine  day  I  would  have  gone  soberly  to  the 
Gastbof  and  written  the  conciliatory  letter ;  but 
the  temptation  was  too  great,  it  was  altogther 
irresistible,  and  in  ten  minutes  I  had  found  the 
gate,  opened  it  with  some  difficulty,  and  was 
standing  with  a  beating  heart  in  the  garden  of 
my  childhood. 

Now  I  wonder  whether  I  shall  ever  again  feel 
thrills  of  the  same  potency  as  those  that  ran 
through  me  at  that  moment.  First  of  all  I  was 
trespassing,  which  is  in  itself  thrilling ;  but  how 
much  more  thrilling  when  you  are  trespassing  on 
what  might  just  as  well  have  been  your  own 
ground,  on  what  actually  was  for  years  your  own 
ground,  and  when  you  are  in  deadly  peril  of  see- 
ing the  rightful  owners,  whom  you  have  never 
met,  but  with  whom  you  have  quarrelled,  appear 
round  the  corner,  and  of  hearing  them  remark 
with  an  inquiring  and  awful  politeness  "  I  do  not 
think  I  have  the  pleasure  —  ?  "  Then  the  place 
was  unchanged.  I  was  standing  in  the  same 
mysterious  tangle  of  damp  little  paths  that  had 
always  been  just  there ;  they  curled  away  on 


72  ELIZABETH   AND 

either  side  among  the  shrubs,  with  the  brown 
tracks  of  recent  footsteps  in  the  centre  of  their 
green  stains,  just  as  they  did  in  my  day.  The 
overgrown  lilac  bushes  still  met  above  my  head. 
The  moisture  dripped  from  the  same  ledge  in  the 
wall  on  to  the  sodden  leaves  beneath,  as  it  had 
done  all  through  the  afternoons  of  all  those  past 
Novembers.  This  was  the  place,  this  damp  and 
gloomy  tangle,  that  had  specially  belonged  to  me. 
Nobody  ever  came  to  it,  for  in  winter  it  was  too 
dreary,  and  in  summer  so  full  of  mosquitoes  that 
only  a  Backfisch  indifferent  to  spots  could  have 
borne  it.  But  it  was  a  place  where  I  could  play 
unobserved,  and  where  I  could  walk  up  and  down 
uninterrupted  for  hours,  building  castles  in  the 
air.  There  was  an  unwholesome  little  arbour  in 
one  dark  corner,  much  frequented  by  the  larger 
black  slug,  where  I  used  to  pass  glorious  after- 
noons making  plans.  I  was  for  ever  making 
plans,  and  if  nothing  came  of  them,  what  did 
it  matter?  The  mere  making  had  been  a  joy. 
To  me  this  out-of-the-way  corner  was  always  a 
wonderful  and  a  mysterious  place,  where  my 
castles  in  the  air  stood  close  together  in  radiant 
rows,  and  where  the  strangest  and  most  splen- 
did adventures  befell  me ;  for  the  hours  I  passed 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  73 

in   it  and  the  people   I   met  in  it  were  all  en- 
chanted. 

Standing  there  and  looking  round  with  happy 
eyes,  I  forgot  the  existence  of  the  cousins.  I 
could  have  cried  for  joy  at  being  there  again.  It 
was  the  home  of  my  fathers,  the  home  that  would 
have  been  mine  if  I  had  been  a  boy,  the  home 
that  was  mine  now  by  a  thousand  tender  and 
happy  and  miserable  associations,  of  which  the 
people  in  possession  could  not  dream.  They 
were  tenants,  but  it  was  my  home.  I  threw  my 
arms  round  the  trunk  of  a  very  wet  fir  tree,  every 
branch  of  which  I  remembered,  for  had  I  not 
climbed  it,  and  fallen  from  it,  and  torn  and 
bruised  myself  on  it  uncountable  numbers  of 
times  ?  and  I  gave  it  such  a  hearty  kiss  that  my 
nose  and  chin  were  smudged  into  one  green  stain, 
and  still  I  did  not  care.  Far  from  caring,  it  filled 
me  with  a  reckless,  Backfisch  pleasure  in  being 
dirty,  a  delicious  feeling  that  I  had  not  had  for 
years.  Alice  in  Wonderland,  after  she  had  drunk 
the  contents  of  the  magic  bottle,  could  not  have 
grown  smaller  more  suddenly  than  I  grew  younger 
the  moment  I  passed  through  that  magic  door. 
Bad  habits  cling  to  us,  however,  with  such  persis- 
tency that  I  did  mechanically  pull  out  my  handker- 


74  ELIZABETH   AND 

chief  and  begin  to  rub  off  the  welcoming  smudge, 
a  thing  I  never  would  have  dreamed  of  doing  in 
the  glorious  old  days ;  but  an  artful  scent  of  vio- 
lets clinging  to  the  handkerchief  brought  me  to 
my  senses,  and  with  a  sudden  impulse  of  scorn, 
the  fine  scorn  for  scent  of  every  honest  Backfisch, 
I  rolled  it  up  into  a  ball  and  flung  it  away  into 
the  bushes,  where  I  daresay  it  is  at  this  moment. 
"  Away  with  you,"  I  cried,  "  away  with  you,  sym- 
bol of  conventionality,  of  slavery,  of  pandering  to 
a  desire  to  please  —  away  with  you,  miserable  little 
lace-edged  rag  ! "  And  so  young  had  I  grown 
within  the  last  few  minutes  that  I  did  not  even 
feel  silly. 

As  a  Backfisch  I  had  never  used  handkerchiefs 
—  the  child  of  nature  scorns  to  blow  its  nose  — 
though  for  decency's  sake  my  governess  insisted 
on  giving  me  a  clean  one  of  vast  size  and  stubborn 
texture  on  Sundays.  It  was  stowed  away  unfolded 
in  the  remotest  corner  of  my  pocket,  where  it  was 
gradually  pressed  into  a  beautiful  compactness  by 
the  other  contents,  which  were  knives.  After  a 
while,  I  remember,  the  handkerchief  being  brought 
to  light  on  Sundays  to  make  room  for  a  successor, 
and  being  manifestly  perfectly  clean,  we  came  to 
an  agreement  that  it  should  only  be  changed 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  75 

on  the  first  and  third  Sundays  in  the  month,  on 
condition  that  I  promised  to  turn  it  on  the  other 
Sundays.  My  governess  said  that  the  outer  folds 
became  soiled  from  the  mere  contact  with  the  other 
things  in  my  pocket,  and  that  visitors  might  catch 
sight  of  the  soiled  side  if  it  was  never  turned  when 
I  wished  to  blow  my  nose  in  their  presence,  and 
that  one  had  no  right  to  give  one's  visitors  shocks. 

"  But  I  never  do  wish "  I  began  with  great 

earnestness.  "  Unsinn"  said  my  governess,  cut- 
ting me  short. 

After  the  first  thrills  of  joy  at  being  there  again 
had  gone,  the  profound  stillness  of  the  dripping 
little  shrubbery  frightened  me.  It  was  so  still 
that  I  was  afraid  to  move ;  so  still,  that  I  could 
count  each  drop  of  moisture  falling  from  the  ooz- 
ing wall ;  so  still,  that  when  I  held  my  breath  to 
listen,  I  was  deafened  by  my  own  heart-beats.  I 
made  a  step  forward  in  the  direction  where  the 
arbour  ought  to  be,  and  the  rustling  and  jingling 
of  my  clothes  terrified  me  into  immobility.  The 
house  was  only  two  hundred  yards  off,  and  if 
any  one  had  been  about,  the  noise  I  had  already 
made  opening  the  creaking  door  and  so  foolishly 
apostrophising  my  handkerchief  must  have  been 
noticed.  Suppose  an  inquiring  gardener,  or  a 


76  ELIZABETH   AND 

restless  cousin,  should  presently  loom  through 
the  fog,  bearing  down  upon  me  ?  Suppose 
Fraulein  Wundermacher  should  pounce  upon 
me  suddenly  from  behind,  coming  up  noiselessly 
in  her  galoshes,  and  shatter  my  castles  with  her 
customary  triumphant  "  Jetzt  halte  ich  dich  aber 
fest !  "  Why,  what  was  I  thinking  of?  Frau- 
lein Wundermacher,  so  big  and  masterful,  such 
an  enemy  of  day-dreams,  such  a  friend  of  das 
Praktlsche^  such  a  lover  of  creature  comforts,  had 
died  long  ago,  had  been  succeeded  long  ago  by 
others,  German  sometimes,  and  sometimes  Eng- 
lish, and  sometimes  at  intervals  French,  and  they 
too  had  all  in  their  turn  vanished,  and  I  was  here 
a  solitary  ghost.  "  Come,  Elizabeth,"  said  I  to 
myself  impatiently,  "are  you  actually  growing 
sentimental  over  your  governesses  ?  If  you  think 
you  are  a  ghost,  be  glad  at  least  that  you  are  a 
solitary  one.  Would  you  like  the  ghosts  of  all 
those  poor  women  you  tormented  to  rise  up  now 
in  this  gloomy  place  against  you  ?  And  do  you 
intend  to  stand  here  till  you  are  caught  ?  "  And 
thus  exhorting  myself  to  action,  and  recognising 
how  great  was  the  risk  I  ran  in  lingering,  I 
started  down  the  little  path  leading  to  the  arbour 
and  the  principal  part  of  the  garden,  going,  it  is 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  7; 

true,  on  tiptoe,  and  very  much  frightened  by  the 
rustling  of  my  petticoats,  but  determined  to  see 
what  I  had  come  to  see  and  not  to  be  scared 
away  by  phantoms. 

How  regretfully  did  I  think  at  that  moment 
of  the  petticoats  of  my  youth,  so  short,  so 
silent,  and  so  woollen !  And  how  convenient 
the  canvas  shoes  were  with  the  india  rubber 
soles,  for  creeping  about  without  making  a 
sound !  Thanks  to  them  I  could  always  run 
swiftly  and  unheard  into  my  hiding-places,  and 
stay  there  listening  to  the  garden  resounding 
with  cries  of  "  Elizabeth !  Elizabeth  !  Come 
in  at  once  to  your  lessons ! "  Or,  at  a  dif- 
ferent period,  "  Ou  2tes-vous  done,  petite  sotte  ?  " 
Or  at  yet  another  period,  "  Warte  nury  wenn 
ich  dicb  erst  babe  I  "  As  the  voices  came  round 
one  corner,  I  whisked  in  my  noiseless  clothes 
round  the  next,  and  it  was  only  Fraulein  Wun- 
dermacher,  a  person  of  resource,  who  dis- 
covered that  all  she  needed  for  my  successful 
circumvention  was  galoshes.  She  purchased  a 
pair,  wasted  no  breath  calling  me,  and  would 
come  up  silently,  as  I  stood  lapped  in  a  false 
security  lost  in  the  contemplation  of  a  squirrel 
or  a  robin,  and  seize  me  by  the  shoulders  from 


78  ELIZABETH   AND 

behind,  to  the  grievous  unhinging  of  my  nerves. 
Stealing  along  in  the  fog,  I  looked  back  uneasily 
once  or  twice,  so  vivid  was  this  disquieting  mem- 
ory, and  could  hardly  be  reassured  by  putting  up 
my  hand  to  the  elaborate  twists  and  curls  that 
compose  what  my  maid  calls  my  Frisur,  and  that 
mark  the  gulf  lying  between  the  present  and  the 
past ;  for  it  had  happened  once  or  twice,  awful 
to  relate  and  to  remember,  that  Fraulein  Wun- 
dermacher,  sooner  than  let  me  slip  through  her 
fingers,  had  actually  caught  me  by  the  long  plait 
of  hair  to  whose  other  end  I  was  attached  and 
whose  English  name  I  had  been  told  was  pigtail, 
just  at  the  instant  when  I  was  springing  away 
from  her  into  the  bushes ;  and  so  had  led  me 
home  triumphant,  holding  on  tight  to  the  rope 
of  hair,  and  muttering  with  a  broad  smile  of 
special  satisfaction,  "  Diesmal  wirst  du  mir  aber 
nicht  entschlupfen  !  "  Fraulein  Wundermacher, 
now  I  came  to  think  of  it,  must  have  been  a 
humourist.  She  was  certainly  a  clever  and  a 
capable  woman.  But  I  wished  at  that  moment 
that  she  would  not  haunt  me  so  persistently, 
and  that  I  could  get  rid  of  the  feeling  that  she 
was  just  behind  in  her  galoshes,  with  her  hand 
stretched  out  to  seize  me. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  79 

Passing  the  arbour,  and  peering  into  its  damp 
recesses,  I  started  back  with  my  heart  in  my 
mouth.  I  thought  I  saw  my  grandfather's  stern 
eyes  shining  in  the  darkness.  It  was  evident 
that  my  anxiety  lest  the  cousins  should  catch 
me  had  quite  upset  my  nerves,  for  I  am  not  by 
nature  inclined  to  see  eyes  where  eyes  are  not. 
"  Don't  be  foolish,  Elizabeth,"  murmured  my 
soul  in  rather  a  faint  voice,  "  go  in,  and  make 
sure."  "  But  I  don't  like  going  in  and  making 
sure,"  I  replied.  I  did  go  in,  however,  with  a 
sufficient  show  of  courage,  and  fortunately  the 
eyes  vanished.  What  I  should  have  done  if 
they  had  not  I  am  altogether  unable  to  imagine. 
Ghosts  are  things  that  I  laugh  at  in  the  daytime 
and  fear  at  night,  but  I  think  if  I  were  to  meet 
one  I  should  die.  The  arbour  had  fallen  into 
great  decay,  and  was  in  the  last  stage  of  mouldi- 
ness.  My  grandfather  had  had  it  made,  and, 
like  other  buildings,  it  enjoyed  a  period  of  pros- 
perity before  being  left  to  the  ravages  of  slugs 
and  children,  when  he  came  down  every  after- 
noon in  summer  and  drank  his  coffee  there  and 
read  his  Kreuzzeitung  and  dozed,  while  the  rest 
of  us  went  about  on  tiptoe,  and  only  the  birds 
dared  sing.  Even  the  mosquitoes  that  infested 


80  ELIZABETH   AND 

the  place  were  too  much  in  awe  of  him  to  sting 
him ;  they  certainly  never  did  sting  him,  and  I 
naturally  concluded  it  must  be  because  he  had  for- 
bidden suqh  familiarities.  Although  I  had  played 
there  for  so  many  years  since  his  death,  my 
memory  skipped  them  all,  and  went  back  to  the 
days  when  it  was  exclusively  his.  Standing  on 
the  spot  where  his  armchair  used  to  be,  I  felt 
how  well  I  knew  him  now  from  the  impressions 
he  made  then  on  my  child's  mind,  though  I  was 
not  conscious  of  them  for  more  than  twenty 
years.  Nobody  told  me  about  him,  and  he  died 
when  I  was  six,  and  yet  within  the  last  year  or 
two,  that  strange  Indian  summer  of  remembrance 
that  comes  to  us  in  the  leisured  times  when  the 
children  have  been  born  and  we  have  time  to 
think,  has  made  me  know  him  perfectly  well. 
It  is  rather  an  uncomfortable  thought  for  the 
grown-up,  and  especially  for  the  parent,  but  of 
a  salutary  and  restraining  nature,  that  though 
children  may  not  understand  what  is  said  and 
done  before  them,  and  have  no  interest  in  it  at 
the  time,  and  though  they  may  forget  it  at  once 
and  for  years,  yet  these  things  that  they  have 
seen  and  heard  and  not  noticed  have  after  all 
impressed  themselves  for  ever  on  their  minds, 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  81 

and  when  they  are  men  and  women  come  crowd- 
ing back  with  surprising  and  often  painful  dis- 
tinctness, and  away  frisk  all  the  cherished  little 
illusions  in  flocks. 

I  had  an  awful  reverence  for  my  grandfather. 
He  never  petted,  and  he  often  frowned,  and  such 
people  are  generally  reverenced.  Besides,  he  was 
a  just  man,  everybody  said ;  a  just  man  who 
might  have  been  a  great  man  if  he  had  chosen, 
and  risen  to  almost  any  pinnacle  of  worldly  glory. 
That  he  had  not  so  chosen  was  held  to  be  a  con- 
vincing proof  of  his  greatness ;  for  he  was  plainly 
too  great  to  be  great  in  the  vulgar  sense,  and 
shrouded  himself  in  the  dignity  of  privacy  and 
potentialities.  This,  at  least,  as  time  passed  and 
he  still  did  nothing,  was  the  belief  of  the  simple 
people  around.  People  must  believe  in  some- 
body, and  having  pinned  their  faith  on  my 
grandfather  in  the  promising  years  that  lie  round 
thirty,  it  was  more  convenient  to  let  it  remain 
there.  He  pervaded  our  family  life  till  my  sixth 
year,  and  saw  to  it  that  we  all  behaved  ourselves? 
and  then  he  died,  and  we  were  glad  that  he 
should  be  in  heaven.  He  was  a  good  German 
(and  when  Germans  are  good  they  are  very  good) 
who  kept  the  commandments,  voted  for  the  Gov- 


82  ELIZABETH   AND 

ernment,  grew  prize  potatoes  and  bred  innumer- 
able sheep,  drove  to  Berlin  once  a  year  with  the 
wool  in  a  procession  of  waggons  behind  him  and 
sold  it  at  the  annual  Wollmarkt,  .rioted  soberly 
for  a  few  days  there,  and  then  carried  most  of 
the  proceeds  home,  hunted  as  often  as  possible, 
helped  his  friends,  punished  his  children,  read  his 
Bible,  said  his  prayers,  and  was  genuinely  aston- 
ished when  his  wife  had  the  affectation  to  die  of 
a  broken  heart.  I  cannot  pretend  to  explain  this 
conduct.  She  ought,  of  course,  to  have  been 
happy  in  the  possession  of  so  good  a  man ;  but 
good  men  are  sometimes  oppressive,  and  to  have 
one  in  the  house  with  you  and  to  live  in  the 
daily  glare  of  his  goodness  must  be  a  tremendous 
business.  After  bearing  him  seven  sons  and  three 
daughters,  therefore,  my  grandmother  died  in  the 
way  described,  and  afforded,  said  my  grandfather, 
another  and  a  very  curious  proof  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  ever  being  sure  of  your  ground  with 
women.  The  incident  faded  more  quickly  from 
his  mind  than  it  might  otherwise  have  done  for 
its  having  occurred  simultaneously  with  the  pro- 
duction of  a  new  kind  of  potato,  of  which  he  was 
justly  proud.  He  called  it  Trost  in  Trauer^  and 
quoted  the  text  of  Scripture  Auge  urn  Auge,  Zabn 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  83 

urn  Zabn,  after  which  he  did  not  again  allude  to 
his  wife's  decease.  In  his  last  years,  when  my 
father  managed  the  estate,  and  he  only  lived  with 
us  and  criticised,  he  came  to  have  the  reputation 
of  an  oracle.  The  neighbours  sent  him  their  sons 
at  the  beginning  of  any  important  phase  in  their 
lives,  and  he  received  them  in  this  very  arbour, 
administering  eloquent  and  minute  advice  in  the 
deep  voice  that  rolled  round  the  shrubbery  and 
filled  me  with  a  vague  sense  of  guilt  as  I  played. 
Sitting  among  the  bushes  playing  muffled  games 
for  fear  of  disturbing  him,  I  supposed  he  must  be 
reading  aloud,  so  unbroken  was  the  monotony  of 
that  majestic  roll.  The  young  men  used  to  come 
out  again  bathed  in  perspiration,  much  stung  by 
mosquitoes,  and  looking  bewildered  ;  and  when 
they  had  got  over  the  impression  made  by  my 
grandfather's  speech  and  presence,  no  doubt  for- 
got all  he  had  said  with  wholesome  quickness, 
and  set  themselves  to  the  interesting  and  neces- 
sary work  of  gaining  their  own  experience.  Once, 
indeed,  a  dreadful  thir<g  happened,  whose  imme- 
diate consequence  was  the  abrupt  end  to  the  long 
and  close  friendship  between  us  and  our  nearest 
neighbour.  His  son  was  brought  to  the  arbour 
and  left  there  in  the  usual  way,  and  either  he 


84  ELIZABETH   AND 

must  have  happened  on  the  critical  half  hour 
after  the  coffee  and  before  the  Kreuzzeitung,  when 
my  grandfather  was  accustomed  to  sleep,  or  he 
was  more  courageous  than  the  others  and  tried  to 
talk,  for  very  shortly,  playing  as  usual  near  at 
hand,  I  heard  my  grandfather's  voice,  raised  to 
an  extent  that  made  me  stop  in  my  game  and 
quake,  saying  with  deliberate  anger,  "  Hebe  dich 
weg  von  mir^  Sobn  des  Satans  I "  Which  was 
all  the  advice  this  particular  young  man  got,  and 
which  he  hastened  to  take,  for  out  he  came 
through  the  bushes,  and  though  his  face  was  very 
pale,  there  was  an  odd  twist  about  the  corners  of 
his  mouth  that  reassured  me. 

This  must  have  happened  quite  at  the  end  of 
my  grandfather's  life,  for  almost  immediately 
afterwards,  as  it  now  seems  to  me,  he  died  before 
he  need  have  done  because  he  would  eat  crab,  a 
dish  that  never  agreed  with  him,  in  the  face  of  his 
doctor's  warning  that  if  he  did  he  would  surely 
die.  "  What !  am  I  to  be  conquered  by  crabs  ?  " 
he  demanded  indignantly  of  the  doctor ;  for  apart 
from  loving  them  with  all  his  heart  he  had  never 
yet  been  conquered  by  anything.  "  Nay,  sir,  the 
combat  is  too  unequal  —  do  not,  I  pray  you,  try 
it  again,"  replied  the  doctor.  But  my  grand- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  85 

father  ordered  crabs  that  very  night  for  supper, 
and  went  in  to  table  with  the  shining  eyes  of  one 
who  is  determined  to  conquer  or  die,  and  the 
crabs  conquered,  and  he  died.  "He  was  a  just 
man,"  said  the  neighbours,  except  that  nearest 
neighbour,  formerly  his  best  friend,  "  and  might 
have  been  a  great  one  had  he  so  chosen."  And 
they  buried  him  with  profound  respect,  and  the 
sunshine  came  into  our  home  life  with  a  burst, 
and  the  birds  were  not  the  only  creatures  that 
sang,  and  the  arbour,  from  having  been  a  temple 
of  Delphic  utterances,  sank  into  a  home  for  slugs. 

Musing  on  the  strangeness  of  life,  and  on  the 
invariable  ultimate  triumph  of  the  insignificant 
and  small  over  the  important  and  vast,  illustrated 
in  this  instance  by  the  easy  substitution  in  the 
arbour  of  slugs  for  grandfathers,  I  went  slowly 
round  the  next  bend  of  the  path,  and  came  to  the 
broad  walk  along  the  south  side  of  the  high  wall 
dividing  the  flower  garden  from  the  kitchen  gar- 
den, in  which  sheltered  position  my  father  had 
had  his  choicest  flowers.  Here  the  cousins  had 
been  at  work,  and  all  the  climbing  roses  that 
clothed  the  wall  with  beauty  were  gone,  and  some 
very  neat  fruit  trees,  tidily  nailed  up  at  proper 


86  ELIZABETH   AND 

intervals,  reigned  in  their  stead.  Evidently  the 
cousins  knew  the  value  of  this  warm  aspect,  for 
in  the  border  beneath,  filled  in  my  father's  time 
in  this  month  of  November  with  the  wallflowers 
that  were  to  perfume  the  walk  in  spring,  there 
was  a  thick  crop  of —  I  stooped  down  close  to 
make  sure  —  yes,  a  thick  crop  of  radishes.  My 
eyes  filled  with  tears  at  the  sight  of  those  radishes, 
and  it  is  probably  the  only  occasion  on  record  on 
which  radishes  have  made  anybody  cry.  My 
dear  father,  whom  I  so  passionately  loved,  had  in 
his  turn  passionately  loved  this  particular  border, 
and  spent  the  spare  moments  of  a  busy  life  enjoy- 
ing the  flowers  that  grew  in  it.  He  had  no  time 
himself  for  a  more  near  acquaintance  with  the 
delights  of  gardening  than  directing  what  plants 
were  to  be  used,  but  found  rest  from  his  daily 
work  strolling  up  and  down  here,  or  sitting  smok- 
ing as  close  to  the  flowers  as  possible.  "It  is  the 
Purest  of  Humane  pleasures,  it  is  the  Greatest 
Refreshment  to  the  Spirits  of  Man,"  he  would 
quote  (for  he  read  other  things  besides  the  Kreuz- 
zeitung})  looking  round  with  satisfaction  on  reach- 
ing this  fragrant  haven  after  a  hot  day  in  the 
fields.  Well,  the  cousins  did  not  think  so.  Less 
fanciful,  and  more  sensible  as  they  probably  would 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  87 

have  said,  their  position  plainly  was  that  you  can- 
not eat  flowers.  Their  spirits  required  no  refresh- 
ment, but  their  bodies  needed  much,  and  therefore 
radishes  were  more  precious  than  wallflowers.  Nor 
was  my  youth  wholly  destitute  of  radishes,  but 
they  were  grown  in  the  decent  obscurity  of  odd 
kitchen  garden  corners  and  old  cucumber  frames, 
and  would  never  have  been  allowed  to  come 
among  the  flowers.  And  only  because  I  was 
not  a  boy  here  they  were  profaning  the  ground 
that  used  to  be  so  beautiful.  Oh,  it  was  a  terrible 
misfortune  not  to  have  been  a  boy !  And  how 
sad  and  lonely  it  was,  after  all,  in  this  ghostly 
garden.  The  radish  bed  and  what  it  symbolised 
had  turned  my  first  joy  into  grief.  This  walk 
and  border  me  too  much  of  my  father  reminded, 
and  of  all  he  had  been  to  me.  What  I  knew  of 
good  he  had  taught  me,  and  what  I  had  of  happi- 
ness was  through  him.  Only  once  during  all  the 
years  we  lived  together  had  we  been  of  different 
opinions  and  fallen  out,  and  it  was  the  one  time 
I  ever  saw  him  severe.  I  was  four  years  old, 
and  demanded  one  Sunday  to  be  taken  to  church. 
My  father  said  no,  for  I  had  never  been  to 
church,  and  the  German  service  is  long  and  ex- 
hausting. I  implored.  He  again  said  no.  I 


88  ELIZABETH   AND 

implored  again,  and  showed  such  a  pious  dispo- 
sition, and  so  earnest  a  determination  to  behave 
well,  that  he  gave  in,  and  we  went  off  very  hap- 
pily hand  in  hand.  "  Now  mind,  Elizabeth,"  he 
said,  turning  to  me  at  the  church  door,  "there  is 
no  coming  out  again  in  the  middle.  Having 
insisted  on  being  brought,  thou  shalt  now  sit 
patiently  till  the  end."  "  Oh,  yes,  oh,  yes,"  I 
promised  eagerly,  and  went  in  filled  with  holy 
fire.  The  shortness  of  my  legs,  hanging  help- 
lessly for  two  hours  midway  between  the  seat  and 
the  floor,  was  the  weapon  chosen  by  Satan  for  my 
destruction.  In  German  churches  you  do  not 
kneel,  and  seldom  stand,  but  sit  nearly  the  whole 
time,  praying  and  singing  in  great  comfort.  If 
you  are  four  years  old,  however,  this  unchanged 
position  soon  becomes  one  of  torture.  Unknown 
and  dreadful  things  go  on  in  your  legs,  strange 
prickings  and  tinglings  and  dartings  up  and  down, 
a  sudden  terrifying  numbness,  when  you  think 
they  must  have  dropped  off  but  are  afraid  to  look, 
then  renewed  and  fiercer  prickings,  shootings,  and 
burnings.  I  thought  I  must  be  very  ill,  for  I 
had  never  known  my  legs  like  that  before.  My 
father  sitting  beside  me  was  engrossed  in  the 
singing  of  a  chorale  that  evidently  had  no  end, 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  89 

each  verse  finished  with  a  long-drawn-out  halle- 
lujah, after  which  the  organ  played  by  itself  for  a 
hundred  years — by  the  organist's  watch,  which  was 
wrong,  two  minutes  exactly  —  and  then  another 
verse  began.  My  father,  being  the  patron  of  the 
living,  was  careful  to  sing  and  pray  and  listen 
to  the  sermon  with  exemplary  attention,  aware 
that  every  eye  in  the  little  church  was  on  our 
pew,  and  at  first  I  tried  to  imitate  him ;  but  the 
behaviour  of  my  legs  became  so  alarming  that 
after  vainly  casting  imploring  glances  at  him  and 
seeing  that  he  continued  his  singing  unmoved,  I 
put  out  my  hand  and  pulled  his  sleeve. 

"  Hal-le-lu-jah,"  sang  my  father  with  delibera- 
tion ;  continuing  in  a  low  voice  without  changing 
the  expression  of  his  face,  his  lips  hardly  moving, 
and  his  eyes  fixed  abstractedly  on  the  ceiling  till 
the  organist,  who  was  also  the  postman,  should 
have  finished  his  solo,  "  Did  I  not  tell  thee  to  sit 
still,  Elizabeth  ? " 

"Yes,  but " 

"  Then  do  it." 

"  But  I  want  to  go  home." 

"  Unsinn."  And  the  next  verse  beginning,  my 
father  sang  louder  than  ever.  What  could  I  do  ? 
Should  I  cry  ?  I  began  to  be  afraid  I  was  going 


90  ELIZABETH   AND 

to  die  on  that  chair,  so  extraordinary  were  the 
sensations  in  my  legs.  What  could  my  father  do 
to  me  if  I  did  cry  ?  With  the  quick  instinct  of 
small  children  I  felt  that  he  could  not  put  me  in 
the  corner  in  church,  nor  would  he  whip  me  in 
public,  and  that  with  the  whole  village  looking 
on,  he  was  helpless,  and  would  have  to  give  in. 
Therefore  I  tugged  his  sleeve  again  and  more 
peremptorily,  and  prepared  to  demand  my  imme- 
diate removal  in  a  loud  voice.  But  my  father 
was  ready  for  me.  Without  interrupting  his 
singing,  or  altering  his  devout  expression,  he  put 
his  hand  slowly  down  and  gave  me  a  hard  pinch 
—  not  a  playful  pinch,  but  a  good  hard  unmis- 
takeable  pinch,  such  as  I  had  never  imagined  pos- 
sible, and  then  went  on  serenely  to  the  next 
hallelujah.  For  a  moment  I  was  petrified  with 
astonishment.  Was  this  my  indulgent  father,  my 
playmate,  adorer,  and  friend  ?  Smarting  with 
pain,  for  I  was  a  round  baby,  with  a  nicely 
stretched,  tight  skin,  and  dreadfully  hurt  in  my 
feelings,  I  opened  my  mouth  to  shriek  in  earnest, 
when  my  father's  clear  whisper  fell  on  my  ear, 
each  word  distinct  and  not  to  be  misunderstood, 
his  eyes  as  before  gazing  meditatively  into  space, 
and  his  lips  hardly  moving,  "Elizabeth,  wenn 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  91 

du  scbreist,  kneife  icb  dich  bis  du  platzt."     And 
he  finished  the  verse  with  unruffled  decorum  — 

"Will  Satan  mich  verschlingen, 
So  lass  die  Engel  singen 

Hallelujah!" 

We  never  had  another  difference.  Up  to 
then  he  had  been  my  willing  slave,  and  after 
that  I  was  his. 

With  a  smile  and  a  shiver  I  turned  from  the 
border  and  its  memories  to  the  door  in  the  wall 
leading  to  the  kitchen  garden,  in  a  corner  of 
which  my  own  little  garden  used  to  be.  The 
door  was  open,  and  I  stood  still  a  moment  be- 
fore going  through,  to  hold  my  breath  and  listen. 
The  silence  was  as  profound  as  before.  The 
place  seemed  deserted ;  and  I  should  have 
thought  the  house  empty  and  shut  up  but  for 
the  carefully  tended  radishes  and  the  recent  foot- 
marks on  the  green  of  the  path.  They  were 
the  footmarks  of  a  child.  I  was  stooping  down 
to  examine  a  specially  clear  one,  when  the  loud 
caw  of  a  very  bored  looking  crow  sitting  on  the 
wall  just  above  my  head  made  me  jump  as  I 
have  seldom  in  my  life  jumped,  and  reminded 
me  that  I  was  trespassing.  Clearly  my  nerves 


92  ELIZABETH   AND 

were  all  to  pieces,  for  I  gathered  up  my  skirts 
and  fled  through  the  door  as  though  a  whole 
army  of  ghosts  and  cousins  were  at  my  heels, 
nor  did  I  stop  till  I  had  reached  the  remote 
corner  where  my  garden  was.  "  Are  you  enjoy- 
ing yourself,  Elizabeth  ? "  asked  the  mocking 
sprite  that  calls  itself  my  soul :  but  I  was  too 
much  out  of  breath  to  answer. 

This  was  really  a  very  safe  corner.  It  was 
separated  from  the  main  garden  and  the  house 
by  the  wall,  and  shut  in  on  the  north  side  by  an 
orchard,  and  it  was  to  the  last  degree  unlikely 
that  any  one  would  come  there  on  such  an  after- 
noon. This  plot  of  ground,  turned  now  as  I 
saw  into  a  rockery,  had  been  the  scene  of  my 
most  untiring  labours.  Into  the  cold  earth  of 
this  north  border  on  which  the  sun  never  shone 
I  had  dug  my  brightest  hopes.  All  my  pocket 
money  had  been  spent  on  it,  and  as  bulbs  were 
dear  and  my  weekly  allowance  small,  in  a  fatal 
hour  I  had  borrowed  from  Fraulein  Wunder- 
rnacher,  selling  her  my  independence,  passing 
utterly  into  her  power,  forced  as  a  result  till  my 
next  birthday  should  come  round  to  an  unnatural 
suavity  of  speech  and  manner  in  her  company, 
against  which  my  very  soul  revolted.  And  after 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  93 

all,  nothing  came  up.  The  labour  of  digging 
and  watering,  the  anxious  zeal  with  which  I 
pounced  on  weeds,  the  poring  over  gardening 
books,  the  plans  made  as  I  sat  on  the  little  seat 
in  the  middle  gazing  admiringly  and  with  the 
eye  of  faith  on  the  trim  surface  so  soon  to  be 
gemmed  with  a  thousand  flowers,  the  reckless 
expenditure  of  pfennings,  the  humiliation  of  my 
position  in  regard  to  Fraulein  Wundermacher, — 
all,  all  had  been  in  vain.  No  sun  shone  there, 
and  nothing  grew.  The  gardener  who  reigned 
supreme  in  those  days  had  given  me  this  big 
piece  for  that  sole  reason,  because  he  could  do 
nothing  with,  it  himself.  He  was  no  doubt  of 
opinion  that  it  was  quite  good  enough  for  a  child 
to  experiment  upon,  and  went  his  way,  when  I 
had  thanked  him  with  a  profuseness  of  gratitude 
I  still  remember,  with  an  unmoved  countenance. 
For  more  than  a  year  I  worked  and  waited,  and 
watched  the  career  of  the  flourishing  orchard 
opposite  with  puzzled  feelings.  The  orchard 
was  only  a  few  yards  away,  and  yet,  although 
my  garden  was  full  of  manure,  and  water,  and 
attentions  that  were  never  bestowed  on  the 
orchard,  all  it  could  show  and  ever  did  show 
were  a  few  unhappy  beginnings  of  growth  that 


94  ELIZABETH   AND 

either  remained  stationary  and  did  not  achieve 
flowers,  or  dwindled  down  again  and  vanished. 
Once  I  timidly  asked  the  gardener  if  he  could 
explain  these  signs  and  wonders,  but  he  was  a 
busy  man  with  no  time  for  answering  questions, 
and  told  me  shortly  that  gardening  was  not 
learned  in  a  day.  How  well  I  remember  that 
afternoon,  and  the  very  shape  of  the  lazy  clouds, 
and  the  smell  of  spring  things,  and  myself  going 
away  abashed  and  sitting  on  the  shaky  bench  in 
my  domain  and  wondering  for  the  hundredth 
time  what  it  was  that  made  the  difference  be- 
tween my  bit  and  the  bit  of  orchard  in  front  of 
me.  The  fruit  trees,  far  enough  away  from  the 
wall  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  its  cold  shade, 
were  tossing  their  flower-laden  heads  in  the  sun- 
shine in  a  carelessly  well-satisfied  fashion  that 
filled  my  heart  with  envy.  There  was  a  rise  in 
the  field  behind  them,  and  at  the  foot  of  its  pro- 
tecting slope  they  luxuriated  in  the  insolent  glory 
of  their  white  and  pink  perfection.  It  was  May, 
and  my  heart  bled  at  the  thought  of  the  tulips 
I  had  put  in  in  November,  and  that  I  had  never 
seen  since.  The  whole  of  the  rest  of  the  garden 
was  on  fire  with  tulips ;  behind  me,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  wall,  were  rows  and  rows  of  them,  — 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  95 

cups  of  translucent  loveliness,  a  jewelled  ring 
flung  right  round  the  lawn.  But  what  was  there 
not  on  the  other  side  of  that  wall?  Things  came 
up  there  and  grew  and  flowered  exactly  as  my  gar- 
dening books  said  they  should  do ;  and  in  front 
of  me,  in  the  gay  orchard,  things  that  nobody 
ever  troubled  about  or  cultivated  or  noticed 
throve  joyously  beneath  the  trees,  —  daffodils 
thrusting  their  spears  through  the  grass,  crocuses 
peeping  out  inquiringly,  snowdrops  uncovering 
their  small  cold  faces  when  the  first  shivering 
spring  days  came.  Only  my  piece  that  I  so 
loved  was  perpetually  ugly  and  empty.  And  I 
sat  in  it  thinking  of  these  things  on  that  radiant 
day,  and  wept  aloud. 

Then  an  apprentice  came  by,  a  youth  who 
had  often  seen  me  busily  digging,  and  noticing 
the  unusual  tears,  and  struck  perhaps  by  the 
difference  between  my  garden  and  the  profusion 
of  splendour  all  around,  paused  with  his  barrow 
on  the  path  in  front  of  me,  and  remarked  that 
nobody  could  expect  to  get  blood  out  of  a  stone. 
The  apparent  irrelevance  of  this  statement  made 
me  weep  still  louder,  the  bitter  tears  of  insulted 
sorrow  ;  but  he  stuck  to  his  point,  and  harangued 
me  from  the  path,  explaining  the  connection 


q6  ELIZABETH   AND 

between  north  walls  and  tulips  and  blood  and 
stones  till  my  tears  all  dried  up  again  and  I 
listened  attentively,  for  the  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  from  his  remarks  was  plainly  that  I  had 
been  shamefully  taken  in  by  the  head  gardener, 
who  was  an  unprincipled  person  thenceforward  to 
be  for  ever  mistrusted  and  shunned.  Standing 
on  the  path  from  which  the  kindly  apprentice  had 
expounded  his  proverb,  this  scene  rose  before  me 
as  clearly  as  though  it  had  taken  place  that  very 
day ;  but  how  different  everything  looked,  and 
how  it  had  shrunk  !  Was  this  the  wide  orchard 
that  had  seemed  to  stretch  away,  it  and  the 
sloping  field  beyond,  up  to  the  gates  of  heaven  ? 
I  believe  nearly  every  child  who  is  much  alone 
goes  through  a  certain  time  of  hourly  expecting 
the  Day  of  Judgment,  and  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  that  on  that  Day  the  heavenly  host  would 
enter  the  world  by  that  very  field,  coming  down 
the  slope  in  shining  ranks,  treading  the  daffodils 
under  foot,  filling  the  orchard  with  their  songs 
of  exultation,  joyously  seeking  out  the  sheep 
from  among  the  goats.  Of  course  I  was  a  sheep, 
and  my  governess  and  the  head  gardener  goats, 
so  that  the  results  could  not  fail  to  be  in  every 
way  satisfactory.  But  looking  up  at  the  slope 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  97 

and  remembering  my  visions,  I  laughed  at  the 
smallness  of  the  field  I  had  supposed  would 
hold  all  heaven. 

Here  again  the  cousins  had  been  at  work. 
The  site  of  my  garden  was  occupied  by  a  rockery, 
and  the  orchard  grass  with  all  its  treasures  had 
been  dug  up,  and  the  spaces  between  the  trees 
planted  with  currant  bushes  and  celery  in  admi- 
rable rows  ;  so  that  no  future  little  cousins  will 
be  able  to  dream  of  celestial  hosts  coming  towards 
them  across  the  fields  of  daffodils,  and  will  per- 
haps be  the  better  for  being  free  from  visions  of 
the  kind,  for  as  I  grew  older,  uncomfortable 
doubts  laid  hold  of  my  heart  with  cold  fingers, 
dim  uncertainties  as  to  the  exact  ultimate  position 
of  the  gardener  and  the  governess,  anxious  ques- 
tionings as  to  how  it  would  be  if  it  were  they 
who  turned  out  after  all  to  be  sheep,  and  I 
who ?  For  that  we  all  three  might  be  gath- 
ered into  the  same  fold  at  the  last  never,  in  those 
days,  struck  me  as  possible,  and  if  it  had  I  should 
not  have  liked  it. 

"  Now  what  sort  of  person  can  that  be,"  I 
asked  myself,  shaking  my  head,  as  I  contem- 
plated the  changes  before  me,  "  who  could  put 


98  ELIZABETH   AND 

a  rockery  among  vegetables  and  currant  bushes  ? 
A  rockery,  of  all  things  in  the  gardening  world, 
needs  consummate  tact  in  its  treatment.  It  is 
easier  to  make  mistakes  in  forming  a  rockery 
than  in  any  other  garden  scheme.  Either  it  is 
a  great  success,  or  it  is  great  failure ;  either  it 
is  very  charming,  or  it  is  very  absurd.  There 
is  no  state  between  the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous 
possible  in  a  rockery."  I  stood  shaking  my  head 
disapprovingly  at  the  rockery  before  me,  lost  in 
these  reflections,  when  a  sudden  quick  pattering  of 
feet  coming  along  in  a  great  hurry  made  me  turn 
round  with  a  start,  just  in  time  to  receive  the 
shock  of  a  body  tumbling  out  of  the  mist  and 
knocking  violently  against  me. 

It  was  a  little  girl  of  about  twelve  years 
old. 

"  Hullo  ! "  said  the  little  girl  in  excellent  Eng- 
lish ;  and  then  we  stared  at  each  other  in  astonish- 
ment. 

"  I  thought  you  were  Miss  Robinson,"  said  the 
little  girl,  offering  no  apology  for  having  nearly 
knocked  me  down.  "  Who  are  you  ?  " 

"Miss  Robinson?  Miss  Robinson?"  I  repeated, 
my  eyes  fixed  on  the  little  girl's  face,  and  a  host 
of  memories  stirring  within  me.  "  Why,  didn't  she 


HER    GERMAN   GARDEN  99 

marry  a  missionary,  and  go  out  to  some  place 
where  they  ate  him  ? " 

The  little  girl  stared  harder.  "  Ate  him  ? 
Marry  ?  What,  has  she  been  married  all  this 
time  to  somebody  who's  been  eaten  and  never  let 
on  ?  Oh,  I  say,  what  a  game  !  "  And  she  threw 
back  her  head  and  laughed  till  the  garden  rang 
again. 

"O  hush,  you  dreadful  little  girl!"  I  im- 
plored, catching  her  by  the  arm,  and  terrified 
beyond  measure  by  the  loudness  of  her  mirth. 
"  Don't  make  that  horrid  noise  —  we  are  certain 
to  be  caught  if  you  don't  stop " 

The  little  girl  broke  off  a  shriek  of  laughter  in 
the  middle  and  shut  her  mouth  with  a  snap.  Her 
eyes,  round  and  black  and  shiny  like  boot  buttons, 
came  still  further  out  of  her  head.  "Caught?" 
she  said  eagerly.  "  What,  are  you  afraid  of  being 
caught  too  ?  Well,  this  is  a  game  !  "  And  with 
her  hands  plunged  deep  in  the  pockets  of  her  coat 
she  capered  in  front  of  me  in  the  excess  of  her  en- 
joyment, reminding  me  of  a  very  fat  black  lamb 
frisking  round  the  dazed  and  passive  sheep  its 
mother. 

It  was  clear  that  the  time  had  come  for  me  to 
get  down  to  the  gate  at  the  end  of  the  garden  as 


loo  ELIZABETH   AND 

quickly  as  possible,  and  I  began  to  move  away  in 
that  direction.  The  little  girl  at  once  stopped 
capering  and  planted  herself  squarely  in  front  of 
me.  "  Who  are  you  ?  "  she  said,  examining  me 
from  my  hat  to  my  boots  with  the  keenest 
interest. 

I  considered  this  ungarnished  manner  of  asking 
questions  impertinent,  and,  trying  to  look  lofty, 
made  an  attempt  to  pass  at  the  side. 

The  little  girl,  with  a  quick,  cork-like  move- 
ment, was  there  before  me. 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "  she  repeated,  her  expression 
friendly  but  firm. 

"  Oh,  I  —  I'm  a  pilgrim,"  I  said  in  desperation. 

"  A  pilgrim ! "  echoed  the  little  girl.  She 
seemed  struck,  and  while  she  was  struck  I  slipped 
past  her  and  began  to  walk  quickly  towards  the 
door  in  the  wall.  "  A  pilgrim  ! "  said  the  little 
girl,  again,  keeping  close  beside  me,  and  looking 
me  up  and  down  attentively.  "  I  don't  like  pil- 
grims. Aren't  they  people  who  are  always  walk- 
ing about,  and  have  things  the  matter  with  their 
feet  ?  Have  you  got  anything  the  matter  with 
your  feet  ?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  I  replied  indignantly,  walking 
still  faster. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  ioi 

"  And  they  never  wash,  Miss  Robinson  says. 
You  don't  either,  do  you  ?  " 

"Not  wash?  Oh,  I'm  afraid  you  are  a  very 
badly  brought-up  little  girl  —  oh,  leave  me  alone 
—  I  must  run " 

"  So  must  I,"  said  the  little  girl,  cheerfully, 
"  for  Miss  Robinson  must  be  close  behind  us. 
She  nearly  had  me  just  before  I  found  you." 
And  she  started  running  by  my  side. 

The  thought  of  Miss  Robinson  close  behind 
us  gave  wings  to  my  feet,  and,  casting  my  dig- 
nity, of  which,  indeed,  there  was  but  little  left,  to 
the  winds,  I  fairly  flew  down  the  path.  The  little 
girl  was  not  to  be  outrun,  and  though  she  panted 
and  turned  weird  colours,  kept  by  my  side  and 
even  talked.  Oh,  I  was  tired,  tired  in  body  and 
mind,  tired  by  the  different  shocks  I  had  received, 
tired  by  the  journey,  tired  by  the  want  of  food; 
and  here  I  was  being  forced  to  run  because  this 
very  naughty  little  girl  chose  to  hide  instead  of 
going  in  to  her  lessons. 

"  I  say  —  this  is  jolly "  she  jerked 

out. 

"  But  why  need  we  run  to  the  same  place  ?  " 
I  breathlessly  asked,  in  the  vain  hope  of  getting 
rid  of  her. 


102  ELIZABETH   AND 

"Oh,  yes  —  that's  just — the  fun.  We'd  get 
on  —  together  —  you  and  I " 

"  No,  no,"  said  I,  decided  on  this  point,  be- 
wildered though  I  was. 

"  I  can't  stand  washing  —  either  —  it's  awful 
—  in  winter  —  and  makes  one  have  —  chaps." 

"  But  I  don't  mind  it  in  the  least,"  I  protested 
faintly,  not  having  any  energy  left. 

"  Oh,  I  say  ! "  said  the  little  girl,  looking  at 
my  face,  and  making  the  sound  known  as  a  guf- 
faw. The  familiarity  of  this  little  girl  was  wholly 
revolting. 

We  had  got  safely  through  the  door,  round 
the  corner  past  the  radishes,  and  were  in  the 
shrubbery.  I  knew  from  experience  how  easy 
it  was  to  hide  in  the  tangle  of  little  paths,  and 
stopped  a  moment  to  look  round  and  listen. 
The  little  girl  opened  her  mouth  to  speak. 
With  great  presence  of  mind  I  instantly  put  my 
muff  in  front  of  it  and  held  it  there  tight,  while 
I  listened.  Dead  silence,  except  for  the  laboured 
breathing  and  struggles  of  the  little  girl. 

"  I  don't  hear  a  sound,"  I  whispered,  letting 
her  go  again.  "  Now  what  did  you  want  to 
say  ? "  I  added,  eyeing  her  severely. 

"  I  wanted  to  say,"   she  panted,  "  that  it's  no 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  103 

good  pretending  you  wash  with  a  nose  like 
that." 

"  A  nose  like  that !  A  nose  like  what  ?  "  I 
exclaimed,  greatly  offended ;  and  though  I  put 
up  my  hand  and  very  tenderly  and  carefully  felt 
it,  I  could  find  no  difference  in  it.  "  I  am  afraid 
poor  Miss  Robinson  must  have  a  wretched  life," 
I  said,  in  tones  of  deep  disgust. 

The  little  girl  smiled  fatuously,  as  though  1 
were  paying  her  compliments.  "  It's  all  green 
and  brown,"  she  said,  pointing.  "  Is  it  always 
like  that?" 

Then  I  remembered  the  wet  fir  tree  near  the 
gate,  and  the  enraptured  kiss  it  had  received, 
and  blushed. 

"  Won't  it  come  off?  "  persisted  the  little  girl. 

"  Of  course  it  will  come  off,"  I  answered, 
frowning. 

"  Why  don't  you  rub  it  off? " 

Then  I  remembered  the  throwing  away  of  the 
handkerchief,  and  blushed  again. 

"  Please  lend  me  your  handkerchief,"  I  said 
humbly,  "I  —  I  have  lost  mine." 

There  was  a  great  fumbling  in  six  different 
pockets,  and  then  a  handkerchief  that  made  me 
young  again  merely  to  look  at  it  was  produced. 


104  ELIZABETH   AND 

I  took  it  thankfully  and  rubbed  with  energy,  the 
little  girl,  intensely  interested,  watching  the 
operation  and  giving  me  advice.  "  There  —  it's 
all  right  now  —  a  little  more  on  the  right  — 
there  —  now  it's  all  off." 

"  Are  you  sure  ?  No  green  left  ?  "  I  anxiously 
asked. 

"  No,  it's  red  all  over  now,"  she  replied  cheer- 
fully. "  Let  me  get  home,"  thought  I,  very 
much  upset  by  this  information,  "  let  me  get 
home  to  my  dear,  uncritical,  admiring  babies, 
who  accept  my  nose  as  an  example  of  what  a 
nose  should  be,  and  whatever  its  colour  think 
it  beautiful."  And  thrusting  the  handkerchief 
back  into  the  little  girl's  hands,  I  hurried  away 
down  the  path.  She  packed  it  away  hastily,  but 
it  took  some  seconds  for  it  was  of  the  size  of  a 
small  sheet,  and  then  came  running  after  me. 
"  Where  are  you  going  ? "  she  asked  surprised, 
as  I  turned  down  the  path  leading  to  the 
gate. 

"Through  this  gate,"  I  replied  with  decision. 

"But  you  mustn't  —  we're  not  allowed  to  go 
through  there " 

So  strong  was  the  force  of  old  habits  in  that 
place  that  at  the  words  not  allowed  my  hand 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  105 

dropped  of  itself  from  the  latch ;  and  at  that 
instant  a  voice  calling  quite  close  to  us  through 
the  mist  struck  me  rigid. 

"Elizabeth!  Elizabeth!"  called  the  voice, 
"  Come  in  at  once  to  your  lessons  —  Elizabeth  ! 
Elizabeth  ! " 

"  It's  Miss  Robinson,"  whispered  the  little 
girl,  twinkling  with  excitement ;  then,  catching 
sight  of  my  face,  she  said  once  more  with  eager 
insistence,  "  Who  are  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I'm  a  ghost !  "  I  cried  with  conviction, 
pressing  my  hands  to  my  forehead  and  looking 
round  fearfully. 

"  Pooh,"  said  the  little  girl. 

It  was  the  last  remark  I  heard  her  make,  for 
there  was  a  creaking  of  approaching  boots  in  the 
bushes,  and  seized  by  a  frightful  panic  I  pulled 
the  gate  open  with  one  desperate  pull,  flung  it 
to  behind  me,  and  fled  out  and  away  down  the 
wide,  misty  fields. 


The  Gotha  Almanach  says  that  the  reigning 
cousin  married  the  daughter  of  a  Mr.  Johnstone, 
an  Englishman,  in  1885,  and  that  in  1886  their 
only  child  was  born,  Elizabeth. 


io6  ELIZABETH   AND 

November  iQtb.  —  Last  night  we  had  ten  de- 
grees of  frost  (Fahrenheit),  and  I  went  out  the 
first  thing  this  morning  to  see  what  had  become 
of  the  tea-roses,  and  behold,  they  were  wide 
awake  and  quite  cheerful  —  covered  with  rime  it 
is  true,  but  anything  but  black  and  shrivelled. 
Even  those  in  boxes  on  each  side  of  the  veran- 
dah steps  were  perfectly  alive  and  full  of  buds, 
and  one  in  particular,  a  Bouquet  d'Or,  is  a  mass 
of  buds,  and  would  flower  if  it  could  get  the 
least  encouragement.  I  am  beginning  to  think 
that  the  tenderness  of  tea-roses  is  much  exag- 
gerated, and  am  certainly  very  glad  I  had  the 
courage  to  try  them  in  this  northern  garden. 
But  I  must  not  fly  too  boldly  in  the  face  of  Prov- 
idence, and  have  ordered  those  in  the  boxes  to 
be  taken  into  the  greenhouse  for  the  winter,  and 
hope  the  Bouquet  d'Or,  in  a  sunny  place  near  the 
glass,  may  be  induced  to  open  some  of  those 
buds.  The  greenhouse  is  only  used  as  a  refuge, 
and  kept  at  a  temperature  just  above  freezing,  and 
is  reserved  entirely  for  such  plants  as  cannot  stand 
the  very  coldest  part  of  the  winter  out  of  doors. 
I  don't  use  it  for  growing  anything,  because  I 
don't  love  things  that  will  only  bear  the  garden 
for  three  or  four  months  in  the  year  and  require 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  107 

coaxing  and  petting  for  the  rest  of  it.  Give  me 
a  garden  full  of  strong,  healthy  creatures,  able  to 
stand  roughness  and  cold  without  dismally  giving 
in  and  dying.  I  never  could  see  that  delicacy  of 
constitution  is  pretty,  either  in  plants  or  women. 
No  doubt  there  are  many  lovely  flowers  to  be 
had  by  heat  and  constant  coaxing,  but  then  for 
each  of  these  there  are  fifty  others  still  lovelier 
that  will  gratefully  grow  in  God's  wholesome  air 
and  are  blessed  in  return  with  a  far  greater  inten- 
sity of  scent  and  colour. 

We  have  been  very  busy  till  now  getting  the 
permanent  beds  into  order  and  planting  the  new 
tea-roses,  and  I  am  looking  forward  to  next  sum- 
mer with  more  hope  than  ever  in  spite  of  my 
many  failures.  I  wish  the  years  would  pass 
quickly  that  will  bring  my  garden  to  perfection ! 
The  Persian  Yellows  have  gone  into  their  new 
quarters,  and  their  place  is  occupied  by  the  tea- 
rose  Safrano ;  all  the  rose  beds  are  carpeted  with 
pansies  sown  in  July  and  transplanted  in  October, 
each  bed  having  a  separate  colour.  The  purple 
ones  are  the  most  charming  and  go  well  with 
every  rose,  but  I  have  white  ones  with  Laurette 
Messimy,  and  yellow  ones  with  Safrano,  and  a 
new  red  sort  in  the  big  centre  bed  of  red  roses. 


io8  ELIZABETH   AND 

Round  the  semicircle  on  the  south  side  of  the 
little  privet  hedge  two  rows  of  annual  larkspurs 
in  all  their  delicate  shades  have  been  sown,  and 
just  beyond  the  larkspurs,  on  the  grass,  is  a  semi- 
circle of  standard  tea  and  pillar  roses.  In  front 
of  the  house  the  long  borders  have  been  stocked 
with  larkspurs,  annual  and  perennial,  columbines, 
giant  poppies,  pinks,  Madonna  lilies,  wallflowers, 
hollyhocks,  perennial  phloxes,  peonies,  lavender, 
starworts,  cornflowers,  Lychnis  chalcedonica,  and 
bulbs  packed  in  wherever  bulbs  could  go.  These 
are  the  borders  that  were  so  hardly  used  by  the 
other  gardener.  The  spring  boxes  for  the  veran- 
dah steps  have  been  filled  with  pink  and  white 
and  yellow  tulips.  I  love  tulips  better  than  any 
other  spring  flower ;  they  are  the  embodiment  of 
alert  cheerfulness  and  tidy  grace,  and  next  to  a 
hyacinth  look  like  a  wholesome,  freshly  tubbed 
young  girl  beside  a  stout  lady  whose  every  move- 
ment weighs  down  the  air  with  patchouli.  Their 
faint,  delicate  scent  is  refinement  itself;  and  is 
there  anything  in  the  world  more  charming  than 
the  sprightly  way  they  hold  up  their  little  faces 
to  the  sun  ?  I  have  heard  them  called  bold  and 
flaunting,  but  to  me  they  seem  modest  grace 
itself,  only  always  on  the  alert  to  enjoy  life  as 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  109 

much  as  they  can  and  not  afraid  of  looking  the 
sun  or  anything  else  above  them  in  the  face.  On 
the  grass  there  are  two  beds  of  them  carpeted  with 
forget-me-nots ;  and  in  the  grass,  in  scattered 
groups,  are  daffodils  and  narcissus.  Down  the 
wilder  shrubbery  walks  foxgloves  and  mulleins 
will  (I  hope)  shine  majestic ;  and  one  cool  corner, 
backed  by  a  group  of  firs,  is  graced  by  Madonna 
lilies,  white  foxgloves,  and  columbines.  In  a  dis- 
tant glade  I  have  made  a  spring  garden  round  an 
oak  tree  that  stands  alone  in  the  sun  —  groups  of 
crocuses,  daffodils,  narcissus,  hyacinths,  and  tulips, 
among  such  flowering  shrubs  and  trees  as  Pirus 
Malus  spectabilis,  floribunda,  and  coronaria ; 
Prunus  Juliana,  Mahaleb,  serotina,  triloba,  and 
Pissardi ;  Cydonias  and  Weigelias  in  every  colour, 
and  several  kinds  of  Crataegus  and  other  May 
lovelinesses.  If  the  weather  behaves  itself  nicely, 
and  we  get  gentle  rains  in  due  season,  I  think  this 
little  corner  will  be  beautiful  —  but  what  a  big 
"  if"  it  is !  Drought  is  our  great  enemy,  and 
the  two  last  summers  each  contained  five  weeks 
of  blazing,  cloudless  heat  when  all  the  ditches 
dried  up  and  the  soil  was  like  hot  pastry.  At 
such  times  the  watering  is  naturally  quite  beyond 
the  strength  of  two  men ;  but  as  a  garden  is  a 


no  ELIZABETH   AND 

place  to  be  happy  in,  and  not  one  where  you 
want  to  meet  a  dozen  curious  eyes  at  every  turn, 
I  should  not  like  to  have  more  than  these  two, 
or  rather  one  and  a  half — the  assistant  having 
stork-like  proclivities  and  going  home  in  the 
autumn  to  his  native  Russia,  returning  in  the 
spring  with  the  first  warm  winds.  I  want  to 
keep  him  over  the  winter,  as  there  is  much  to 
be  done  even  then,  and  I  sounded  him  on  the 
point  the  other  day.  He  is  the  most  abject- 
looking  of  human  beings  —  lame,  and  afflicted 
with  a  hideous  eye-disease ;  but  he  is  a  good 
worker  and  plods  along  unwearyingly  from  sun- 
rise to  dusk. 

"  Pray,  my  good  stork,"  said  I,  or  German 
words  to  that  effect,  "  why  don't  you  stay  here 
altogether,  instead  of  going  home  and  rioting  away 
all  you  have  earned  ?  " 

"  I  would  stay,"  he  answered,  "  but  I  have  my 
wife  there  in  Russia." 

"  Your  wife  !  "  I  exclaimed,  stupidly  surprised 
that  the  poor  deformed  creature  should  have  found 
a  mate  —  as  though  there  were  not  a  superfluity 
of  mates  in  the  world  —  "I  didn't  know  you  were 
married  ? " 

"Yes,  and  I  have  two  little    children,  and  I 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  in 

don't  know  what  they  would  do  if  I  were  not  to 
come  home.  But  it  is  a  very  expensive  journey 
to  Russia,  and  costs  me  every  time  seven  marks." 

"  Seven  marks  !  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  a  great  sum." 

I  wondered  whether  I  should  be  able  to  get  to 
Russia  for  seven  marks,  supposing  I  were  to  be 
seized  with  an  unnatural  craving  to  go  there. 

All  the  labourers  who  work  here  from  March 
to  December  are  Russians  and  Poles,  or  a  mixture 
of  both.  We  send  a  man  over  who  can  speak 
their  language,  to  fetch  as  many  as  he  can  early 
in  the  year,  and  they  arrive  with  their  bundles, 
men  and  women  and  babies,  and  as  soon  as  they 
have  got  here  and  had  their  fares  paid,  they  dis- 
appear in  the  night  if  they  get  the  chance,  some- 
times fifty  of  them  at  a  time,  to  go  and  work 
singly  or  in  couples  for  the  peasants,  who  pay 
them  a  pfenning  or  two  more  a  day  than  we  do, 
and  let  them  eat  with  the  family.  From  us  they 
get  a  mark  and  a  half  to  two  marks  a  day,  and  as 
many  potatoes  as  they  can  eat.  The  women  get 
less,  not  because  they  work  less,  but  because  they 
are  women  and  must  not  be  encouraged.  The 
overseer  lives  with  them,  and  has  a  loaded  revol- 
ver in  his  pocket  and  a  savage  dog  at  his  heels. 


:ii  ELIZABETH   AND 

For  the  first  week  or  two  after  their  arrival,  the 
foresters  and  other  permanent  officials  keep  guard 
at  night  over  the  houses  they  are  put  into.  I 
suppose  they  find  it  sleepy  work ;  for  certain  it 
is  that  spring  after  spring  the  same  thing  hap- 
pens, fifty  of  them  getting  away  in  spite  of  all 
our  precautions,  and  we  are  left  with  our  mouths 
open  and  much  out  of  pocket.  This  spring,  by 
some  mistake,  they  arrived  without  their  bundles, 
which  had  gone  astray  on  the  road,  and,  as  they 
travel  in  their  best  clothes,  they  refused  utterly 
to  work  until  their  luggage  came.  Nearly  a 
week  was  lost  waiting,  to  the  despair  of  all  in 
authority. 

Nor  will  any  persuasions  induce  them  to  do 
anything  on  Saints'  days,  and  there  surely  never 
was  a  church  so  full  of  them  as  the  Russian 
Church.  In  the  spring,  when  every  hour  is  of 
vital  importance,  the  work  is  constantly  being 
interrupted  by  them,  and  the  workers  lie  sleeping 
in  the  sun  the  whole  day,  agreeably  conscious  that 
they  are  pleasing  themselves  and  the  Church  at 
one  and  the  same  time  —  a  state  of  perfection  as 
rare  as  it  is  desirable.  Reason  unaided  by  Faith 
is  of  course  exasperated  at  this  waste  of  precious 
time,  and  I  confess  that  during  the  first  mild  days 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  113 

after  the  long  winter  frost  when  it  is  possible  to 
begin  to  work  the  ground,  I  have  sympathised 
with  the  gloom  of  the  Man  of  Wrath,  confronted 
in  one  week  by  two  or  three  empty  days  on  which 
no  man  will  labour,  and  have  listened  in  silence 
to  his  remarks  about  distant  Russian  saints. 

I  suppose  it  was  my  own  superfluous  amount 
of  civilisation  that  made  me  pity  these  people 
when  first  I  came  to  live  among  them.  They 
herd  together  like  animals  and  do  the  work  of 
animals  ;  but  in  spite  of  the  armed  overseer,  the 
dirt  and  the  rags,  the  meals  of  potatoes  washed 
down  by  weak  vinegar  and  water,  I  am  beginning 
to  believe  that  they  would  strongly  object  to  soap, 
I  am  sure  they  would  not  wear  new  clothes,  and 
I  hear  them  coming  home  from  their  work  at 
dusk  singing.  They  are  like  little  children  or 
animals  in  their  utter  inability  to  grasp  the  idea 
of  a  future ;  and  after  all,  if  you  work  all  day  in 
God's  sunshine,  when  evening  comes  you  are 
pleasantly  tired  and  ready  for  rest  and  not  much 
inclined  to  find  fault  with  your  lot.  I  have  not 
yet  persuaded  myself,  however,  that  the  women 
are  happy.  They  have  to  work  as  hard  as  the 
men  and  get  less  for  it ;  they  have  to  produce 
offspring,  quite  regardless  of  times  and  seasons 


H4  ELIZABETH   AND 

and  the  general  fitness  of  things  ;  they  have  to  do 
this  as  expeditiously  as  possible,  so  that  they  may 
not  unduly  interrupt  the  work  in  hand ;  nobody 
helps  them,  notices  them,  or  cares  about  them, 
least  of  all  the  husband.  It  is  quite  a  usual  thing 
to  see  them  working  in  the  fields  in  the  morning, 
and  working  again  in  the  afternoon,  having  in  the 
interval  produced  a  baby.  The  baby  is  left  to  an 
old  woman  whose  duty  it  is  to  look  after  babies 
collectively.  When  I  expressed  my  horror  at  the 
poor  creatures  working  immediately  afterwards  as 
though  nothing  had  happened,  the  Man  of  Wrath 
informed  me  that  they  did  not  suffer  because  they 
had  never  worn  corsets,  nor  had  their  mothers  and 
grandmothers.  We  were  riding  together  at  the 
time,  and  had  just  passed  a  batch  of  workers,  and 
my  husband  was  speaking  to  the  overseer,  when 
a  woman  arrived  alone,  and  taking  up  a  spade, 
began  to  dig.  She  grinned  cheerfully  at  us  as  she 
made  a  curtesy,  and  the  overseer  remarked  that 
she  had  just  been  back  to  the  house  and  had  a 
baby. 

"  Poor,  poor  woman  !  "  I  cried,  as  we  rode  on, 
feeling  for  some  occult  reason  very  angry  with  the 
Man  of  Wrath.  "  And  her  wretched  husband 
doesn't  care  a  rap,  and  will  probably  beat  her 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  115 

to-night  if  his  supper  isn't  right.  What  nonsense 
it  is  to  talk  about  the  equality  of  the  sexes  when 
the  women  have  the  babies  !  " 

"  Quite  so,  my  dear,"  replied  the  Man  of 
Wrath,  smiling  condescendingly.  "  You  have 
got  to  the  very  root  of  the  matter.  Nature, 
while  imposing  this  agreeable  duty  on  the  woman, 
weakens  her  and  disables  her  for  any  serious  com- 
petition with  man.  How  can  a  person  who  is 
constantly  losing  a  year  of  the  best  part  of  her  life 
compete  with  a  young  man  who  never  loses  any 
time  at  all  ?  He  has  the  brute  force,  and  his 
last  word  on  any  subject  could  always  be  his  fist." 

I  said  nothing.  It  was  a  dull,  gray  afternoon 
in  the  beginning  of  November,  and  the  leaves 
dropped  slowly  and  silently  at  our  horses'  feet  as 
we  rode  towards  the  Hirschwald. 

"  It  is  a  universal  custom,"  proceeded  the  Man 
of  Wrath,  "amongst  these  Russians,  and  I  believe 
amongst  the  lower  classes  everywhere,  and  cer- 
tainly commendable  on  the  score  of  simplicity,  to 
silence  a  woman's  objections  and  aspirations  by 
knocking  her  down.  I  have  heard  it  said  that 
this  apparently  brutal  action  has  anything  but  the 
maddening  effect  tenderly  nurtured  persons  might 
suppose,  and  that  the  patient  is  soothed  and  satis- 


u6  ELIZABETH   AND 

fied  with  a  rapidity  and  completeness  unattainable 
by  other  and  more  polite  methods.  Do  you  sup- 
pose," he  went  on,  flicking  a  twig  off  a  tree  with 
his  whip  as  we  passed,  "  that  the  intellectual  hus- 
band, wrestling  intellectually  with  the  chaotic 
yearnings  of  his  intellectual  wife,  ever  achieves 
the  result  aimed  at  ?  He  may  and  does  go  on 
wrestling  till  he  is  tired,  but  never  does  he  in  the 
very  least  convince  her  of  her  folly ;  while  his 
brother  in  the  ragged  coat  has  got  through  the 
whole  business  in  less  time  than  it  takes  me  to 
speak  about  it.  There  is  no  doubt  that  these 
poor  women  fulfil  their  vocation  far  more  thor- 
oughly than  the  women  in  our  class,  and,  as  the 
truest  happiness  consists  in  finding  one's  vocation 
quickly  and  continuing  in  it  all  one's  days,  I  con- 
sider they  are  to  be  envied  rather  than  not,  since 
they  are  early  taught,  by  the  impossibility  of  ar- 
•gument  with  marital  muscle,  the  impotence  of 
female  endeavour  and  the  blessings  of  content." 

"  Pray  go  on,"  I  said  politely. 

"  These  women  accept  their  beatings  with  a 
simplicity  worthy  of  all  praise,  and  far  from  con- 
sidering themselves  insulted,  admire  the  strength 
and  energy  of  the  man  who  can  administer  such 
eloquent  rebukes.  In  Russia,  not  only  may  a  man 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  117 

beat  his  wife,  but  it  is  laid  down  in  the  catechism 
and  taught  all  boys  at  the  time  of  confirmation  as 
necessary  at  least  once  a  week,  whether  she  has 
done  anything  or  not,  for  the  sake  of  her  general 
health  and  happiness." 

I  thought  I  observed  a  tendency  in  the  Man  of 
Wrath  rather  to  gloat  over  these  castigations. 

"  Pray,  my  dear  man,"  I  said,  pointing  with  my 
whip,  "  look  at  that  baby  moon  so  innocently 
peeping  at  us  over  the  edge  of  the  mist  just 
behind  that  silver  birch ;  and  don't  talk  so  much 
about  women  and  things  you  don't  understand. 
What  is  the  use  of  your  bothering  about  fists  and 
whips  and  muscles  and  all  the  dreadful  things  in- 
vented for  the  confusion  of  obstreperous  wives  ? 
You  know  you  are  a  civilised  husband,  and  a  civ- 
ilised husband  is  a  creature  who  has  ceased  to  be 
a  man." 

"And  a  civilised  wife  ?  "  he  asked,  bringing  his 
horse  close  up  beside  me  and  putting  his  arm 
round  my  waist,  "  has  she  ceased  to  be  a 
woman  ?  " 

"  I  should  think  so  indeed,  —  she  is  a  goddess, 
and  can  never  be  worshipped  and  adored  enough." 

"It  seems  to  me,"  he  said,  "  that  the  conversa- 
tion is  growing  personal." 


n8  ELIZABETH   AND 

T  started  off  at  a  canter  across  the  short,  springy 
turf.  The  Hirschwald  is  an  enchanted  place  on 
such  an  evening,  when  the  mists  lie  low  on  the 
turf,  and  overhead  the  delicate,  bare  branches  of 
the  silver  birches  stand  out  clear  against  the  soft 
sky,  while  the  little  moon  looks  down  kindly  on 
the  damp  November  world.  Where  the  trees 
thicken  into  a  wood,  the  fragrance  of  the  wet  earth 
and  rotting  leaves  kicked  up  by  the  horses'  hoofs 
fills  my  soul  with  delight.  I  particularly  love  that 
smell,  —  it  brings  before  me  the  entire  benevo- 
lence of  Nature,  for  ever  working  death  and  de- 
cay, so  piteous  in  themselves,  into  the  means  of 
fresh  life  and  glory,  and  sending  up  sweet  odours 
as  she  works. 

December  Jth.  —  I  have  been  to  England.  I 
went  for  at  least  a  month  and  stayed  a  week 
in  a  fog  and  was  blown  home  again  in  a  gale. 
Twice  I  fled  before  the  fogs  into  the  country 
to  see  friends  with  gardens,  but  it  was  raining, 
and  except  the  beautiful  lawns  (not  to  be  had 
in  the  Fatherland)  and  the  infinite  possibilities, 
there  was  nothing  to  interest  the  intelligent  and 
garden-loving  foreigner,  for  the  good  reason  that 
you  cannot  be  interested  in  gardens  under  an 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  119 

umbrella.  So  I  went  back  to  the  fogs,  and  after 
groping  about  for  a  few  days  more  began  to  long 
inordinately  for  Germany.  A  terrific  gale  sprang 
up  after  I  had  started,  and  the  journey  both  by 
sea  and  land  was  full  of  horrors,  the  trains  in 
Germany  being  heated  to  such  an  extent  that  it 
is  next  to  impossible  to  sit  still,  great  gusts  of 
hot  air  coming  up  under  the  cushions,  the  cush- 
ions themselves  being  very  hot,  and  the  wretched 
traveller  still  hotter. 

But  when  I  reached  my  home  and  got  out  of 
the  train  into  the  purest,  brightest  snow-atmos- 
phere, the  air  so  still  that  the  whole  world  seemed 
to  be  listening,  the  sky  cloudless,  the  crisp  snow 
sparkling  underfoot  and  on  the  trees,  and  a  happy 
row  of  three  beaming  babies  awaiting  me,  I  was  con- 
soled for  all  my  torments,  only  remembering  them 
enough  to  wonder  why  I  had  gone  away  at  all. 

The  babies  each  had  a  kitten  in  one  hand  and 
an  elegant  bouquet  of  pine  needles  and  grass  in 
the  other,  and  what  with  the  due  presentation  of 
the  bouquets  and  the  struggles  of  the  kittens,  the 
hugging  and  kissing  was  much  interfered  with. 
Kittens,  bouquets,  and  babies  were  all  somehow 
squeezed  into  the  sleigh,  and  off  we  went  with 
jingling  bells  and  shrieks  of  delight 


iio  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  Directly  you  comes  home  the  fun  begins,' 
said  the  May  baby,  sitting  very  close  to  me. 
"  How  the  snow  purrs  ! "  cried  the  April  baby, 
as  the  horses  scrunched  it  up  with  their  feet. 
The  June  baby  sat  loudly  singing  "  The  King 
of  Love  my  Shepherd  is,"  and  swinging  her 
kitten  round  by  its  tail  to  emphasise  the  rhythm. 

The  house,  half-buried  in  the  snow,  looked 
the  very  abode  of  peace,  and  I  ran  through  all 
the  rooms,  eager  to  take  possession  of  them 
again,  and  feeling  as  though  I  had  been  away 
for  ever.  When  I  got  to  the  library  I  came  to 
a  standstill,  —  ah,  the  dear  room,  what  happy 
times  I  have  spent  in  it  rummaging  amongst 
the  books,  making  plans  for  my  garden,  build- 
ing castles  in  the  air,  writing,  dreaming,  doing 
nothing !  There  was  a  big  peat  fire  blazing  half 
up  the  chimney,  and  the  old  housekeeper  had 
put  pots  of  flowers  about,  and  on  the  writing- 
table  was  a  great  bunch  of  violets  scenting  the 
room.  "  Oh,  how  good  it  is  to  be  home  again  !  " 
I  sighed  in  my  satisfaction.  The  babies  clung 
about  my  knees,  looking  up  at  me  with  eyes  full 
of  love.  Outside  the  dazzling  snow  and  sun- 
shine, inside  the  bright  room  and  happy  faces 
—  I  thought  of  those  yellow  fogs  and  shivered. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  121 

The  library  is  not  used  by  the  Man  of  Wrath  ; 
it  is  neutral  ground  where  we  meet  in  the  even- 
ings for  an  hour  before  he  disappears  into  his 
own  rooms  —  a  series  of  very  smoky  dens  in 
the  southeast  corner  of  the  house.  It  looks,  I 
am  afraid,  rather  too  gay  for  an  ideal  library ; 
and  its  colouring,  white  and  yellow,  is  so  cheerful 
as  to  be  almost  frivolous.  There  are  white  book- 
cases all  round  the  walls,  and  there  is  a  great 
fireplace,  and  four  windows,  facing  full  south, 
opening  on  to  my  most  cherished  bit  of  garden, 
the  bit  round  the  sun-dial ;  so  that  with  so  much 
colour  and  such  a  big  fire  and  such  floods  of 
sunshine  it  has  anything  but  a  sober  air,  in  spite 
of  the  venerable  volumes  filling  the  shelves. 
Indeed,  I  should  never  be  surprised  if  they 
skipped  down  from  their  places,  and,  picking 
up  their  leaves,  began  to  dance. 

With  this  room  to  live  in,  I  can  look  forward 
with  perfect  equanimity  to  being  snowed  up 
for  any  time  Providence  thinks  proper;  and 
to  go  into  the  garden  in  its  snowed-up  state 
is  like  going  into  a  bath  of  purity.  The  first 
breath  on  opening  the  door  is  so  ineffably  pure 
that  it  makes  me  gasp,  and  I  feel  a  black  and 
sinful  object  in  the  midst  of  all  the  spotlessness. 


122  ELIZABETH   AND 

Yesterday  I  sat  out  of  doors  near  the  sun-dia\ 
the  whole  afternoon,  with  the  thermometer  so 
many  degrees  below  freezing  that  it  will  be 
weeks  finding  its  way  up  again ;  but  there  was 
no  wind,  and  beautiful  sunshine,  and  I  was  well 
wrapped  up  in  furs.  I  even  had  tea  brought 
out  there,  to  the  astonishment  of  the  menials, 
and  sat  till  long  after  the  sun  had  set,  enjoying 
the  frosty  air.  I  had  to  drink  the  tea  very 
quickly,  for  it  showed  a  strong  inclination  to 
begin  to  freeze.  After  the  sun  had  gone  down 
the  rooks  came  home  to  their  nests  in  the  garden 
with  a  great  fuss  and  fluttering,  and  many  hesita- 
tions and  squabbles  before  they  settled  on  their 
respective  trees.  They  flew  over  my  head  in 
hundreds  with  a  mighty  swish  of  wings,  and 
when  they  had  arranged  themselves  comfortably, 
an  intense  hush  fell  upon  the  garden,  and  the 
house  began  to  look  like  a  Christmas  card,  with 
its  white  roof  against  the  clear,  pale  green  of 
the  western  sky,  and  lamplight  shining  in  the 
windows. 

I  had  been  reading  a  Life  of  Luther,  lent  me  by 
our  parson,  in  the  intervals  between  looking  round 
me  and  being  happy.  He  came  one  day  with  the 
book  and  begged  me  to  read  it,  having  discovered 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  123 

that  my  interest  in  Luther  was  not  as  living  as  it 
ought  to  be ;  so  I  took  it  out  with  me  into  the 
garden,  because  the  dullest  book  takes  on  a  certain 
saving  grace  if  read  out  of  doors,  just  as  bread 
and  butter,  devoid  of  charm  in  the  drawing-room, 
is  ambrosia  eaten  under  a  tree.  I  read  Luther  all 
the  afternoon  with  pauses  for  refreshing  glances  at 
the  garden  and  the  sky,  and  much  thankfulness  in 
my  heart.  His  struggles  with  devils  amazed  me  ; 
and  I  wondered  whether  such  a  day  as  that,  full  of 
grace  and  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  never  struck  him 
as  something  to  make  him  relent  even  towards 
devils.  He  apparently  never  allowed  himself  just 
to  be  happy.  He  was  a  wonderful  man,  but  I  am 
glad  I  was  not  his  wife. 

Our  parson  is  an  interesting  person,  and  un- 
tiring in  his  efforts  to  improve  himself.  Both  he 
and  his  wife  study  whenever  they  have  a  spare 
moment,  and  there  is  a  tradition  that  she  stirs  her 
puddings  with  one  hand  and  holds  a  Latin  gram- 
mar in  the  other,  the  grammar,  of  course,  getting 
the  greater  share  of  her  attention.  To  most  Ger- 
man Hausfraus  the  dinners  and  the  puddings  are 
of  paramount  importance,  and  they  pride  them- 
selves on  keeping  those  parts  of  their  houses  that 
are  seen  in  a  state  of  perpetual  and  spotless  per- 


124  ELIZABETH   AND 

faction,  and  this  is  exceedingly  praiseworthy  ;  but, 
I  would  humbly  inquire,  are  there  not  other 
things  even  more  important  ?  And  is  not  plain 
living  and  high  thinking  better  than  the  other 
way  about  ?  And  all  too  careful  making  of  din- 
ners and  dusting  of  furniture  takes  a  terrible 
amount  of  precious  time,  and  —  and  with  shame  I 
confess  that  my  sympathies  are  all  with  the  pud- 
ding and  the  grammar.  It  cannot  be  right  to  be 
the  slave  of  one's  household  gods,  and  I  protest 
that  if  my  furniture  ever  annoyed  me  by  wanting 
to  be  dusted  when  I  wanted  to  be  doing  some- 
thing else,  and  there  was  no  one  to  do  the  dusting 
for  me,  I  would  cast  it  all  into  the  nearest  bonfire 
and  sit  and  warm  my  toes  at  the  flames  with  great 
contentment,  triumphantly  selling  my  dusters  to 
the  very  next  pedlar  who  was  weak  enough  to  buy 
them.  Parsons'  wives  have  to  do  the  housework 
and  cooking  themselves,  and  are  thus  not  only 
cooks  and  housemaids,  but  if  they  have  children 
—  and  they  always  do  have  children  —  they  are 
head  and  under  nurse  as  well ;  and  besides  these 
trifling  duties  have  a  good  deal  to  do  with  their 
fruit  and  vegetable  garden,  and  everything  to  do 
with  their  poultry.  This  being  so,  is  it  not 
pathetic  to  find  a  young  woman  bravely  strug- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  125 

gling  to  learn  languages  and  keep  up  with  her 
husband  ?  If  I  were  that  husband,  those  pud- 
dings would  taste  sweetest  to  me  that  were  served 
with  Latin  sauce.  They  are  both  severely  pious, 
and  are  for  ever  engaged  in  desperate  efforts  to 
practise  what  they  preach ;  than  which,  as  we  all 
know,  nothing  is  more  difficult.  He  works  in 
his  parish  with  the  most  noble  self-devotion,  and 
never  loses  courage,  although  his  efforts  have 
been  several  times  rewarded  by  disgusting  libels 
pasted  up  on  the  street-corners,  thrown  under 
doors,  and  even  fastened  to  his  own  garden  wall. 
The  peasant  hereabouts  is  past  belief  low  and 
animal,  and  a  sensitive,  intellectual  parson  among 
them  is  really  a  pearl  before  swine.  For  years  he 
has  gone  on  unflinchingly,  filled  with  the  most  liv- 
ing faith  and  hope  and  charity,  and  I  sometimes 
wonder  whether  they  are  any  better  now  in  his 
parish  than  they  were  under  his  predecessor,  a  man 
who  smoked  and  drank  beer  from  Monday  morn- 
ing to  Saturday  night,  never  did  a  stroke  of  work, 
and  often  kept  the  scanty  congregation  waiting 
on  Sunday  afternoons  while  he  finished  his  post- 
prandial nap.  It  is  discouraging  enough  to  make 
most  men  give  in,  and  leave  the  parish  to  get  to 
heaven  or  not  as  it  pleases ;  but  he  never  seems 


126  ELIZABETH   AND 

discouraged,  and  goes  on  sacrificing  the  best  part 
of  his  life  to  these  people  when  all  his  tastes  are 
literary,  and  all  his  inclinations  towards  the  life  of 
the  student.  His  convictions  drag  him  out  of 
his  little  home  at  all  hours  to  minister  to  the  sick 
and  exhort  the  wicked ;  they  give  him  no  rest, 
and  never  let  him  feel  he  has  done  enough  ;  and 
when  he  comes  home  weary,  after  a  day's  wrestling 
with  his  parishioners'  souls,  he  is  confronted  on 
his  doorstep  by  filthy  abuse  pasted  up  on  his  own 
front  door.  He  never  speaks  of  these  things,  but 
how  shall  they  be  hid  ?  Everybody  here  knows 
everything  that  happens  before  the  day  is  over, 
and  what  we  have  for  dinner  is  of  far  greater  gen- 
eral interest  than  the  most  astounding  political 
earthquake.  They  have  a  pretty,  roomy  cottage, 
and  a  good  bit  of  ground  adjoining  the  churchyard. 
His  predecessor  used  to  hang  out  his  washing  on 
the  tombstones  to  dry,  but  then  he  was  a  person 
entirely  lost  to  all  sense  of  decency,  and  had 
finally  to  be  removed,  preaching  a  farewell  sermon 
of  a  most  vituperative  description,  and  hurling 
invective  at  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who  sat  up  in  his 
box  drinking  in  every  word  and  enjoying  himself 
thoroughly.  The  Man  of  Wrath  likes  novelty, 
and  such  a  sermon  had  never  been  heard  before. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  127 

It  is  spoken  of  in  the  village  to  this  day  with 
bated  breath  and  awful  joy. 

December  iind.  —  Up  to  now  we  have  had  a 
beautiful  winter.  Clear  skies,  frost,  little  wind, 
and,  except  for  a  sharp  touch  now  and  then,  very 
few  really  cold  days.  My  windows  are  gay  with 
hyacinths  and  lilies  of  the  valley ;  and  though,  as 
I  have  said,  I  don't  admire  the  smell  of  hyacinths 
in  the  spring  when  it  seems  wanting  in  youth  and 
chastity  next  to  that  of  other  flowers,  I  am  glad 
enough  now  to  bury  my  nose  in  their  heavy  sweet- 
ness. In  December  one  cannot  afford  to  be  fas- 
tidious ;  besides,  one  is  actually  less  fastidious 
about  everything  in  the  winter.  The  keen  air 
braces  soul  as  well  as  body  into  robustness,  and 
the  food  and  the  perfume  disliked  in  the  summer 
are  perfectly  welcome  then. 

I  am  very  busy  preparing  for  Christmas,  but 
have  often  locked  myself  up  in  a  room  alone, 
shutting  out  my  unfinished  duties,  to  study  the 
flower  catalogues  and  make  my  lists  of  seeds  and 
shrubs  and  trees  for  the  spring.  It  is  a  fascinat- 
ing occupation,  and  acquires  an  additional  charm 
when  you  know  you  ought  to  be  doing  something 
else,  that  Christmas  is  at  the  door,  that  children 


and  servants  and  farm  hands  depend  on  you  for 
their  pleasure,  and  that,  if  you  don't  see  to  the 
decoration  of  the  trees  and  house,  and  the  buying 
of  the  presents,  nobody  else  will.  The  hours  fly 
by  shut  up  with  those  catalogues  and  with  Duty 
snarling  on  the  other  side  of  the  door.  I  don't 
like  Duty  —  everything  in  the  least  disagreeable 
is  always  sure  to  be  one's  duty.  Why  cannot  it 
be  my  duty  to  make  lists  and  plans  for  the  dear 
garden?  "And  so  it  isy"  I  insisted  to  the  Man 
of  Wrath,  when  he  protested  against  what  he 
called  wasting  my  time  upstairs.  "  No,"  he 
replied  sagely ;  "  your  garden  is  not  your  duty, 
because  it  is  your  Pleasure." 

What  a  comfort  it  is  to  have  such  wells  of  wis- 
dom constantly  at  my  disposal !  Anybody  can 
have  a  husband,  but  to  few  is  it  given  to  have  a 
sage,  and  the  combination  of  both  is  as  rare  as  it 
is  useful.  Indeed,  in  its  practical  utility  the  only 
thing  I  ever  saw  to  equal  it  is  a  sofa  my  neighbour 
has  bought  as  a  Christmas  surprise  for  her  hus- 
band, and  which  she  showed  me  the  last  time  I 
called  there  —  a  beautiful  invention,  as  she  ex- 
plained, combining  a  bedstead,  a  sofa,  and  a  chest 
of  drawers,  and  into  which  you  put  your  clothes, 
and  on  top  of  which  you  put  yourself,  and  if  any- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  129 

body  calls  in  the  middle  of  the  night  and  you 
happen  to  be  using  the  drawing-room  as  a  bed- 
room, you  just  pop  the  bedclothes  inside,  and 
there  you  are  discovered  sitting  on  your  sofa  and 
looking  for  all  the  world  as  though  you  had  been 
expecting  visitors  for  hours. 

"  Pray,  does  he  wear  pyjamas  ?  "  I  inquired. 

But  she  had  never  heard  of  pyjamas. 

It  takes  a  long  time  to  make  my  spring  lists.  I 
want  to  have  a  border  all  yellow,  every  shade  of 
yellow  from  fieriest  orange  to  nearly  white,  and 
the  amount  of  work  and  studying  of  gardening 
books  it  costs  me  will  only  be  appreciated  by  be- 
ginners like  myself.  I  have  been  weeks  planning 
it,  and  it  is  not  nearly  finished.  I  want  it  to  be 
a  succession  of  glories  from  May  till  the  frosts, 
and  the  chief  feature  is  to  be  the  number  of 
"ardent  marigolds"  —  flowers  that  I  very  ten- 
derly love  —  and  nasturtiums.  The  nasturtiums 
are  to  be  of  every  sort  and  shade,  and  are  to  climb 
and  creep  and  grow  in  bushes,  and  show  their 
lovely  flowers  and  leaves  to  the  best  advantage. 
Then  there  are  to  be  eschscholtzias,  dahlias,  sun- 
flowers, zinnias,  scabiosa,  portulaca,  yellow  violas, 
yellow  stocks,  yellow  sweet-peas,  yellow  lupins  — 
everything  that  is  yellow  or  that  has  a  yellow  va- 


130  ELIZABETH   AND 

riety.  The  place  I  have  chosen  for  it  is  a  long,  wide 
border  in  the  sun,  at  the  foot  of  a  grassy  slope 
crowned  with  lilacs  and  pines,  and  facing  south- 
east. You  go  through  a  little  pine  wood,  and, 
turning  a  corner,  are  to  come  suddenly  upon  this 
bit  of  captured  morning  glory.  I  want  it  to  be 
blinding  in  its  brightness  after  the  dark,  cool  path 
through  the  wood. 

That  is  the  idea.  Depression  seizes  me  when 
I  reflect  upon  the  probable  difference  between  the 
idea  and  its  realisation.  I  am  ignorant,  and  the 
gardener  is,  I  do  believe,  still  more  so ;  for  he  was 
forcing  some  tulips,  and  they  have  all  shrivelled  up 
and  died,  and  he  says  he  cannot  imagine  why. 
Besides,  he  is  in  love  with  the  cook,  and  is  going 
to  marry  her  after  Christmas,  and  refuses  to  enter 
into  any  of  my  plans  with  the  enthusiasm  they 
deserve,  but  sits  with  vacant  eye  dreamily  chop- 
ping wood  from  morning  till  night  to  keep  the 
beloved  one's  kitchen  fire  well  supplied.  I  can- 
not understand  any  one  preferring  cooks  to  mari- 
golds ;  those  future  marigolds,  shadowy  as  they 
are,  and  whose  seeds  are  still  sleeping  at  the  seeds- 
man's, have  shone  through  my  winter  days  like 
golden  lamps. 

I  wish  with  all  my  heart  I  were  a  man,  for  of 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  131 

course  the  first  thing  I  should  do  would  be  to  buy 
a  spade  and  go  and  garden,  and  then  I  should 
have  the  delight  of  doing  everything  for  my  flow- 
ers with  my  own  hands  and  need  not  waste  time 
explaining  what  I  want  done  to  somebody  else. 
It  is  dull  work  giving  orders  and  trying  to  de- 
scribe the  bright  visions  of  one's  brain  to  a  per- 
son who  has  no  visions  and  no  brain,  and  who 
thinks  a  yellow  bed  should  be  calceolarias  edged 
with  blue. 

I  have  taken  care  in  choosing  my  yellow  plants 
to  put  down  only  those  humble  ones  that  are 
easily  pleased  and  grateful  for  little,  for  my  soil 
is  by  no  means  all  that  it  might  be,  and  to  most 
plants  the  climate  is  rather  trying.  I  feel  really 
grateful  to  any  flower  that  is  sturdy  and  willing 
enough  to  flourish  here.  Pansies  seem  to  like 
the  place  and  so  do  sweet-peas ;  pinks  don't,  and 
after  much  coaxing  gave  hardly  any  flowers  last 
summer.  Nearly  all  the  roses  were  a  success,  in 
spite  of  the  sandy  soil,  except  the  tea-rose  Adam, 
which  was  covered  with  buds  ready  to  open,  when 
they  suddenly  turned  brown  and  died,  and  three 
standard  Dr.  Grills  which  stood  in  a  row  and 
simply  sulked.  I  had  been  very  excited  about 
Dr.  Grill,  his  description  in  the  catalogues  being 


132  ELIZABETH   AND 

specially  fascinating,  and  no  doubt  I  deserved  the 
snubbing  I  got.  "  Never  be  excited,  my  dears, 
about  anything"  shall  be  the  advice  I  will  give 
the  three  babies  when  the  time  comes  to  take 
them  out  to  parties,  "  or,  if  you  are,  don't  show 
it.  If  by  nature  you  are  volcanoes,  at  least  be 
only  smouldering  ones.  Don't  look  pleased, 
don't  look  interested,  don't,  above  all  things, 
look  eager.  Calm  indifference  should  be  written 
on  every  feature  of  your  faces.  Never  show 
that  you  like  any  one  person,  or  any  one  thing. 
Be  cool,  languid,  and  reserved.  If  you  don't  do 
as  your  mother  tells  you  and  are  just  gushing, 
frisky,  young  idiots,  snubs  will  be  your  portion. 
If  you  do  as  she  tells  you,  you'll  marry  princes 
and  live  happily  ever  after." 

Dr.  Grill  must  be  a  German  rose.  In  this 
part  of  the  world  the  more  you  are  pleased  to  see 
a  person  the  less  is  he  pleased  to  see  you ; 
whereas,  if  you  are  disagreeable,  he  will  grow 
pleasant  visibly,  his  countenance  expanding  into 
wider  amiability  the  more  your  own  is  stiff  and 
sour.  But  I  was  not  prepared  for  that  sort  of 
thing  in  a  rose,  and  was  disgusted  with  Dr.  Grill. 
He  had  the  best  place  in  the  garden  —  warm, 
sunny,  and  sheltered ;  his  holes  were  prepared 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  133 

with  the  tenderest  care ;  he  was  given  the  most 
dainty  mixture  of  compost,  clay,  and  manure ; 
he  was  watered  assiduously  all  through  the 
drought  when  more  willing  flowers  got  nothing ; 
and  he  refused  to  do  anything  but  look  black  and 
shrivel.  He  did  not  die,  but  neither  did  he  live 
—  he  just  existed  ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  summer 
not  one  of  him  had  a  scrap  more  shoot  or  leaf 
than  when  he  was  first  put  in  in  April.  It  would 
have  been  better  if  he  had  died  straight  away,  for 
then  I  should  have  known  what  to  do ;  as  it  is, 
there  he  is  still  occupying  the  best  place,  wrapped 
up  carefully  for  the  winter,  excluding  kinder 
roses,  and  probably  intending  to  repeat  the  same 
conduct  next  year.  Well,  trials  are  the  portion 
of  mankind,  and  gardeners  have  their  share,  and 
in  any  case  it  is  better  to  be  tried  by  plants  than 
persons,  seeing  that  with  plants  you  know  that  it 
is  you  who  are  in  the  wrong,  and  with  persons  it 
is  always  the  other  way  about  —  and  who  is  there 
among  us  who  has  not  felt  the  pangs  of  injured 
innocence,  and  known  them  to  be  grievous  ? 

I  have  two  visitors  staying  with  me,  though  I 
have  done  nothing  to  provoke  such  an  infliction, 
and  had  been  looking  forward  to  a  happy  little 
Christmas  alone  with  the  Man  of  Wrath  and  the 


134  ELIZABETH   AND 

babies.  Fate  decreed  otherwise.  Quite  regu- 
larly, if  I  look  forward  to  anything,  Fate  steps 
in  and  decrees  otherwise ;  I  don't  know  why  it 
should,  but  it  does.  I  had  not  even  invited 
these  good  ladies  —  like  greatness  on  the  modest, 
they  were  thrust  upon  me.  One  is  Irais,  the 
sweet  singer  of  the  summer,  whom  I  love  as  she 
deserves,  but  of  whom  I  certainly  thought  I  had 
seen  the  last  for  at  least  a  year,  when  she  wrote 
and  asked  if  I  would  have  her  over  Christmas, 
as  her  husband  was  out  of  sorts,  and  she  didn't 
like  him  in  that  state.  Neither  do  I  like  sick 
husbands,  so,  full  of  sympathy,  I  begged  her  to 
come,  and  here  she  is.  And  the  other  is 
Minora, 

Why  I  have  to  have  Minora  I  don't  know, 
for  I  was  not  even  aware  of  her  existence  a 
fortnight  ago.  Then  coming  down  cheerfully 
one  morning  to  breakfast  —  it  was  the  very  day 
after  my  return  from  England  —  I  found  a 
letter  from  an  English  friend,  who  up  till  then 
had  been  perfectly  innocuous,  asking  me  to  be- 
friend Minora.  I  read  the  letter  aloud  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who  was  eating 
Spickg&nst  a  delicacy  much  sought  after  in  these 
parts. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  135 

"  Do,  my  dear  Elizabeth,"  wrote  my  friend, 
"take  some  notice  of  the  poor  thing.  She  is 
studying  art  in  Dresden,  and  has  nowhere  liter- 
ally to  go  for  Christmas.  She  is  very  ambitious 
and  hardworking " 

"  Then,"  interrupted  the  Man  of  Wrath,  "  she 
is  not  pretty.  Only  ugly  girls  work  hard." 

"  — and  she  is  really  very  clever " 

"  I  do  not  like  clever  girls,  they  are  so  stupid," 
again  interrupted  the  Man  of  Wrath. 

"  —  and  unless  some  kind  creature  like  your- 
self takes  pity  on  her  she  will  be  very  lonely." 

"  Then  let  her  be  lonely." 

"  Her  mother  is  my  oldest  friend,  and  would 
be  greatly  distressed  to  think  that  her  daughter 
should  be  alone  in  a  foreign  town  at  such  a  season." 

"  I  do  not  mind  the  distress  of  the  mother." 

"  Oh,  dear  me,"  I  exclaimed  impatiently,  "  I 
shall  have  to  ask  her  to  come  !  " 

"  If  you  should  be  inclined,"  the  letter  went 
on,  "  to  play  the  good  Samaritan,  dear  Elizabeth, 
I  am  positive  you  would  find  Minora  a  bright, 
intelligent  companion " 

"  Minora  ?  "  questioned  the  Man  of  Wrath. 

The  April  baby,  who  has  had  a  nursery  gov- 
erness of  an  altogether  alarmingly  zealous  type 


136  ELIZABETH   AND 

attached  to  her  person  for  the  last  six  weeks, 
looked  up  from  her  bread  and  milk. 

"It  sounds  like  islands,"  she  remarked  pen- 
sively. 

The  governess  coughed. 

"  Majora,  Minora,  Alderney,  and  Sark,"  ex- 
plained her  pupil. 

I  looked  at  her  severely. 

"  If  you  are  not  careful,  April,"  I  said,  "  you'll 
be  a  genius  when  you  grow  up  and  disgrace  your 
parents." 

Miss  Jones  looked  as  though  she  did  not  like 
Germans.  I  am  afraid  she  despises  us  because 
she  thinks  we  are  foreigners  —  an  attitude  of 
mind  quite  British  and  wholly  to  her  credit ;  but 
we,  on  the  other  hand,  regard  her  as  a  foreigner, 
which,  of  course,  makes  things  complicated. 

"  Shall  I  really  have  to  have  this  strange 
girl  ? "  I  asked,  addressing  nobody  in  particular 
and  not  expecting  a  reply. 

"  You  need  not  have  her,"  said  the  Man  of 
Wrath  composedly,  "  but  you  will.  You  will 
write  to-day  and  cordially  invite  her,  and  when 
she  has  been  here  twenty-four  hours  you  will 
quarrel  with  her.  I  know  you,  my  dear." 

"  Quarrel !     I  ?     With  a  little  art-student  ? " 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  137 

Miss  Jones  cast  down  her  eyes.  She  is  perpet- 
ually scenting  a  scene,  and  is  always  ready  to  bring 
whole  batteries  of  discretion  and  tact  and  good 
taste  to  bear  on  us,  and  seems  to  know  we  are  dis- 
puting in  an  unseemly  manner  when  we  would 
never  dream  it  ourselves  but  for  the  warning  of 
her  downcast  eyes.  I  would  take  my  courage  in 
both  hands  and  ask  her  to  go,  for  besides  this 
superfluity  of  discreet  behaviour  she  is,  although 
only  nursery,  much  too  zealous,  and  inclined  to 
be  always  teaching  and  never  playing ;  but,  un- 
fortunately, the  April  baby  adores  her  and  is  sure 
there  never  was  any  one  so  beautiful  before.  She 
comes  every  day  with  fresh  accounts  of  the  splen- 
dours of  her  wardrobe,  and  feeling  descriptions  of 
her  umbrellas  and  hats ;  and  Miss  Jones  looks 
offended  and  purses  up  her  lips.  In  common 
with  most  governesses,  she  has  a  little  dark  down 
on  her  upper  lip,  and  the  April  baby  appeared 
one  day  at  dinner  with  her  own  decorated  in  faith- 
ful imitation,  having  achieved  it  after  much  strug- 
gling, with  the  aid  of  a  lead  pencil  and  unbounded 
love.  Miss  Jones  put  her  in  the  corner  for  im- 
pertinence. I  wonder  why  governesses  are  so 
unpleasant.  The  Man  of  Wrath  says  it  is  be- 
cause they  are  not  married.  Without  venturing 


138  ELIZABETH   AND 

to  differ  entirely  from  the  opinion  of  experience, 
I  would  add  that  the  strain  of  continually  having 
to  set  an  example  must  surely  be  very  great.  It 
is  much  easier,  and  often  more  pleasant,  to  be  a 
warning  than  an  example,  and  governesses  are  but 
women,  and  women  are  sometimes  foolish,  and 
when  you  want  to  be  foolish  it  must  be  annoying 
to  have  to  be  wise. 

Minora  and  Irais  arrived  yesterday  together; 
or  rather,  when  the  carriage  drove  up,  Irais  got 
out  of  it  alone,  and  informed  me  that  there  was 
a  strange  girl  on  a  bicycle  a  little  way  behind.  I 
sent  back  the  carriage  to  pick  her  up,  for  it  was 
dusk  and  the  roads  are  terrible. 

"But  why  do  you  have  strange  girls  here  at 
all  ? "  asked  Irais  rather  peevishly,  taking  off  her 
hat  in  the  library  before  the  fire,  and  otherwise 
making  herself  very  much  at  home  ;  "  I  don't  like 
them.  I'm  not  sure  that  they're  not  worse  than 
husbands  who  are  out  of  order.  Who  is  she  ? 
She  would  bicycle  from  the  station,  and  is,  I  am 
sure,  the  first  woman  who  has  done  it.  The  little 
boys  threw  stones  at  her." 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  that  only  shows  the  ignorance 
of  the  little  boys.  Never  mind  her.  Let  us 
have  tea  in  peace  before  she  comes." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  139 

"  But  we  should  be  much  happier  without  her," 
she  grumbled.  "  Weren't  we  happy  enough  in 
the  summer,  Elizabeth  — just  you  and  I  ?  " 

"Yes,  indeed  we  were,"  I  answered  heartily, 
putting  my  arms  round  her.  The  flame  of  my 
affection  for  Irais  burns  very  brightly  on  the  day 
of  her  arrival ;  besides,  this  time  I  have  prudently 
provided  against  her  sinning  with  the  salt-cellars 
by  ordering  them  to  be  handed  round  like  vege- 
table dishes.  We  had  finished  tea  and  she  had 
gone  up  to  her  room  to  dress  before  Minora  and 
her  bicycle  were  got  here.  I  hurried  out  to  meet 
her,  feeling  sorry  for  her,  plunged  into  a  circle  of 
strangers  at  such  a  very  personal  season  as  Christ- 
mas. But  she  was  not  very  shy ;  indeed,  she 
was  less  shy  than  I  was,  and  lingered  in  the  hall, 
giving  the  servants  directions  to  wipe  the  snow 
off  the  tyres  of  her  machine  before  she  lent  an 
attentive  ear  to  my  welcoming  remarks. 

"I  couldn't  make  your  man  understand  me  at  the 
station,"  she  said  at  last,  when  her  mind  was  at  rest 
about  her  bicycle  ;  "  I  asked  him  how  far  it  was, 
and  what  the  roads  were  like,  and  he  only  smiled. 
Is  he  German  ?  But  of  course  he  is  —  how  odd 
that  he  didn't  understand.  You  speak  English 
very  well,  —  very  well  indeed,  do  you  know." 


140  ELIZABETH   AND 

By  this  time  we  were  in  the  library,  and  she 
stood  on  the  hearth-rug  warming  her  back  while 
I  poured  her  out  some  tea. 

"  What  a  quaint  room,"  she  remarked,  looking 
round, "  and  the  hall  is  so  curious  too.  Very  old, 
isn't  it  ?  There's  a  lot  of  copy  here." 

The  Man  of  Wrath,  who  had  been  in  the  hall 
on  her  arrival  and  had  come  in  with  us,  began  to 
look  about  on  the  carpet.  "  Copy?"  he  inquired, 
"Where's  copy?" 

"  Oh  —  material,  you  know,  for  a  book.  I'm 
just  jotting  down  what  strikes  me  in  your  coun- 
try, and  when  I  have  time  shall  throw  it  into 
book  form."  She  spoke  very  loud,  as  English 
people  always  do  to  foreigners. 

"  My  dear,"  I  said  breathlessly  to  Irais,  when 
I  had  got  into  her  room  and  shut  the  door  and 
Minora  was  safely  in  hers,  "  what  do  you  think 
—  she  writes-  books  !  " 

"  What  —  the  bicycling  girl  ?  " 

"  Yes  —  Minora  —  imagine  it !  " 

We  stood  and  looked  at  each  other  with  awe- 
struck faces. 

"  How  dreadful !  "  murmured  Irais.  "  I  never 
met  a  young  girl  who  did  that  before." 

"  She  says  this  place  is  full  of  copy." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  141 

"Full  of  what?" 

"  That's  what  you  make  books  with." 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  this  is  worse  than  I  expected ! 
A  strange  girl  is  always  a  bore  among  good 
friends,  but  one  can  generally  manage  her.  But 
a  girl  who  writes  books  —  why,  it  isn't  respect- 
able !  And  you  can't  snub  that  sort  of  people ; 
they're  unsnubbable." 

"  Oh,  but  we'll  try  !  "  I  cried,  with  such  hearti- 
ness that  we  both  laughed. 

The  hall  and  the  library  struck  Minora  most ; 
indeed,  she  lingered  so  long  after  dinner  in  the 
hall,  which  is  cold,  that  the  Man  of  Wrath  put 
on  his  fur  coat  by  way  of  a  gentle  hint.  His 
hints  are  always  gentle. 

She  wanted  to  hear  the  whole  story  about  the 
chapel  and  the  nuns  and  Gustavus  Adolphus,  and 
pulling  out  a  fat  note-book  began  to  take  down 
what  I  said.  I  at  once  relapsed  into  silence. 

"Well? "she  said. 

"  That's  all." 

"  Oh,  but  you've  only  just  begun." 

"  It  doesn't  go  any  further.  Won't  you  come 
into  the  library  ?  " 

In  the  library  sjie  again  took  up  her  stand 
before  the  fire  and  warmed  herself,  and  we  sat  in 


i42  ELIZABETH   AND 

a  row  and  were  cold.  She  has  a  wonderfully 
good  profile,  which  is  irritating.  The  wind,  how- 
ever, is  tempered  to  the  shorn  lamb  by  her  eyes 
being  set  too  closely  together. 

Irais  lit  a  cigarette,  and  leaning  back  in  her 
chair,  contemplated  her  critically  beneath  her 
long  eyelashes.  "  You  are  writing  a  book  ? " 
she  asked  presently. 

"  Well  —  yes,  I  suppose  I  may  say  that  I  am. 
Just  my  impressions,  you  know,  of  your  country. 
Anything  that  strikes  me  as  curious  or  amusing 
—  I  jot  it  down,  and  when  I  have  time  shall 
work  it  up  into  something,  I  daresay." 

"  Are  you  not  studying  painting  ?  " 

"Yes,  but  I  can't  study  that  for  ever.  We 
have  an  English  proverb  :  c  Life  is  short  and  Art 
is  long'  —  too  long,  I  sometimes  think  —  and 
writing  is  a  great  relaxation  when  I  am  tired." 

"What  shall  you  call  it?" 

"  Oh,  I  thought  of  calling  it  Journeylngs  in 
Germany.  It  sounds  well,  and  would  be  correct. 
Or  Jottings  from  German  Journey  ings,  —  I  haven't 
quite  decided  yet  which." 

"  By  the  author  of  Prowls  in  Pomeraniay  you 
might  add,"  suggested  Irais. 

"  And  Drivel  from  Dresden,'  said  I. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  143 

"And  Eosh from  Berlin"  added  Irais. 

Minora  stared.  "  I  don't  think  those  two  last 
ones  would  do,"  she  said,  "  because  it  is  not  to  be 
a  facetious  book.  But  your  first  one  is  rather  a 
good  title,"  she  added,  looking  at  Irais  and  draw- 
ing out  her  note-book.  "  I  think  I'll  just  jot 
that  down." 

"If  you  jot  down  all  we  say  and  then  pub- 
lish it,  will  it  still  be  your  book  ? "  asked  Irais. 

But  Minora  was  so  busy  scribbling  that  she 
did  not  hear. 

"  And  havejo#  no  suggestions  to  make,  Sage  ?  " 
asked  Irais,  turning  to  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who 
was  blowing  out  clouds  of  smoke  in  silence. 

"  Oh,  do  you  call  him  Sage  ?  "  cried  Minora ; 
"  and  always  in  English  ?  " 

Irais  and  I  looked  at  each  other.  We  knew 
what  we  did  call  him,  and  were  afraid  Minora 
would  in  time  ferret  it  out  and  enter  it  in  her 
note-book.  The  Man  of  Wrath  looked  none 
too  well  pleased  to  be  alluded  to  under  his  very 
nose  by  our  new  guest  as  "  him." 

"  Husbands  are  always  sages,"  said  I  gravely. 

"  Though  sages  are  not  always  husbands,"  said 
Irais  with  equal  gravity.  "  Sages  and  husbands 
—  sage  and  husbands "she  went  on  mus- 


144  ELIZABETH   AND 

ingly,  "what  does  that  remind  you  of,  Miss 
Minora  ? " 

"  Oh,  I  know,  —  how  stupid  of  me  !  "  cried 
Minora  eagerly,  her  pencil  in  mid-air  and  her 
brain  clutching  at  the  elusive  recollection,  "  sage 
and,  — why,  —  yes, —  no, —  yes,  of  course  —  oh," 
disappointedly,  "  but  that's  vulgar  —  I  can't  put 
it  in." 

"  What  is  vulgar  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  She  thinks  sage  and  onions  is  vulgar,"  said 
Irais  languidly;  "but  it  isn't,  it  is  very  good." 
She  got  up  and  walked  to  the  piano,  and,  sitting 
down,  began,  after  a  little  wandering  over  the 
keys,  to  sing. 

"  Do  you  play  ? "  I  asked  Minora. 

"  Yes,  but  I  am  afraid  I  am  rather  out  of 
practice." 

I  said  no  more.  I  know  what  that  sort  of 
playing  is. 

When  we  were  lighting  our  bedroom  candles 
Minora  began  suddenly  to  speak  in  an  unknown 
tongue.  We  stared.  "  What  is  the  matter  with 
her?"  murmured  Irais. 

"  I  thought,  perhaps,"  said  Minora  in  English, 
"you  might  prefer  to  talk  German,  and  as  it  is 
all  the  same  to  me  what  I  talk " 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  145 

"  Oh,  pray  don't  trouble,"  said  Irais.  "  We 
like  airing  our  English  —  don't  we,  Elizabeth  ?  " 

"  I  don't  want  my  German  to  get  rusty 
though,"  said  Minora ;  "  I  shouldn't  like  to 
forget  it." 

"Oh,  but  isn't  there  an  English  song,"  said 
Irais,  twisting  round  her  neck  as  she  preceded 
us  upstairs,  " f  'Tis  folly  to  remember,  'tis  wis- 
dom to  forget '  ?  " 

"  You  are  not  nervous  sleeping  alone,  I  hope," 
I  said  hastily. 

"  What  room  is  she  in  ?  "  asked  Irais. 

"No.  12." 

"  Oh  !  —  do  you  believe  in  ghosts  ? " 

Minora  turned  pale. 

"What  nonsense,"  said  I;  "we  have  no  ghosts 
here.  Good-night.  If  you  want  anything,  mind 
you  ring." 

"And  if  you  see  anything  curious  in  that 
room,"  called  Irais  from  her  bedroom  door, 
"mind  you  jot  it  down." 

December  I'jth.  —  It  is  the  fashion,  I  believe, 
to  regard  Christmas  as  a  bore  of  rather  a  gross 
description,  and  as  a  time  when  you  are  invited 
to  over-eat  yourself,  and  pretend  to  be  merry 


146  ELIZABETH   AND 

without  just  cause.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is 
one  of  the  prettiest  and  most  poetic  institutions 
possible,  if  observed  in  the  proper  manner,  and 
after  having  been  more  or  less  unpleasant  to 
everybody  for  a  whole  year,  it  is  a  blessing  to 
be  forced  on  that  one  day  to  be  amiable,  and  it 
is  certainly  delightful  to  be  able  to  give  presents 
without  being  haunted  by  the  conviction  that 
you  are  spoiling  the  recipient,  and  will  suffer 
for  it  afterward.  Servants  are  only  big  children, 
and  are  made  just  as  happy  as  children  by  little 
presents  and  nice  things  to  eat,  and,  for  days 
beforehand,  every  time  the  three  babies  go  into 
the  garden  they  expect  to  meet  the  Christ  Child 
with  His  arms  full  of  gifts.  They  firmly  believe 
that  it  is  thus  their  presents  are  brought,  and  it 
is  such  a  charming  idea  that  Christmas  would  be 
worth  celebrating  for  its  sake  alone. 

As  great  secrecy  is  observed,  the  preparations 
devolve  entirely  on  me,  and  it  is  not  very  easy 
work,  with  so  many  people  in  our  own  house  and 
on  each  of  the  farms,  and  all  the  children,  big  and 
little,  expecting  their  share  of  happiness.  The 
library  is  uninhabitable  for  several  days  before 
and  after,  as  it  is  there  that  we  have  the  trees  and 
presents.  All  down  one  side  are  the  trees,  and 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  147 

the  other  three  sides  are  lined  with  tables,  a  sepa- 
rate one  for  each  person  in  the  house.  When 
the  trees  are  lighted,  and  stand  in  their  radiance 
shining  down  on  the  happy  faces,  I  forget  all  the 
trouble  it  has  been,  and  the  number  of  times  I 
have  had  to  run  up  and  down  stairs,  and  the 
various  aches  in  head  and  feet,  and  enjoy  myself 
as  much  as  anybody.  First  the  June  baby  is 
ushered  in,  then  the  others  and  ourselves  accord- 
ing to  age,  then  the  servants,  then  come  the  head 
inspector  and  his  family,  the  other  inspectors 
from  the  different  farms,  the  mamsells,  the  book- 
keepers and  secretaries,  and  then  all  the  children, 
troops  and  troops  of  them  —  the  big  ones  lead- 
ing the  little  ones  by  the  hand  and  carrying  the 
babies  in  their  arms,  and  the  mothers  peeping 
round  the  door.  As  many  as  can  get  in  stand 
in  front  of  the  trees,  and  sing  two  or  three  carols  ; 
then  they  are  given  their  presents,  and  go  off 
triumphantly,  making  room  for  the  next  batch. 
My  three  babies  sang  lustily  too,  whether  they 
happened  to  know  what  was  being  sung  or  not. 
They  had  on  white  dresses  in  honour  of  the 
occasion,  and  the  June  baby  was  even  arrayed 
in  a  low-necked  and  short-sleeved  garment,  after 
the  manner  of  Teutonic  infants,  whatever  the 


148  ELIZABETH   AND 

state  of  the  thermometer.  Her  arms  are  like 
miniature  prize-fighter's  arms  —  I  never  saw 
such  things ;  they  are  the  pride  and  joy  of  her 
little  nurse,  who  had  tied  them  up  with  blue 
ribbons,  and  kept  on  kissing  them.  I  shall  cer- 
tainly not  be  able  to  take  her  to  balls  when  she 
grows  up,  if  she  goes  on  having  arms  like  that. 

When  they  came  to  say  good- night,  they  were 
all  very  pale  and  subdued.  The  April  baby  had 
an  exhausted-looking  Japanese  doll  with  her, 
which  she  said  she  was  taking  to  bed,  not  because 
she  liked  him,  but  because  she  was  so  sorry  for 
him,  he  seemed  so  very  tired.  They  kissed  me 
absently,  and  went  away,  only  the  April  baby 
glancing  at  the  trees  as  she  passed  and  making 
them  a  curtesy. 

"  Good-bye,  trees,"  I  heard  her  say ;  and  then 
she  made  the  Japanese  doll  bow  to  them,  which 
he  did,  in  a  very  languid  and  blase  fashion. 
"Tou'H  never  see  such  trees  again,"  she  told 
him,  giving  him  a  vindictive  shake,  "for  you'll 
be  brokened  long  before  next  time." 

She  went  out,  but  came  back  as  though  she 
had  forgotten  something. 

"  Thank  the  Cbristkind  so  much.  Mummy, 
won't  you,  for  all  the  lovely  things  He  brought 


HER   GERMAN  GARDEN  149 

us.     I  suppose  you're  writing  to  Him  now,  isn't 
you  ? " 

I  cannot  see  that  there  was  anything  gross 
about  our  Christmas,  and  we  were  perfectly  merry 
without  any  need  to  pretend,  and  for  at  least 
two  days  it  brought  us  a  little  nearer  together, 
and  made  us  kind.  Happiness  is  so  whole- 
some ;  it  invigorates  and  warms  me  into  piety 
far  more  effectually  than  any  amount  of  trials 
and  griefs,  and  an  unexpected  pleasure  is  the 
surest  means  of  bringing  me  to  my  knees.  In 
spite  of  the  protestations  of  some  peculiarly  con- 
structed persons  that  they  are  the  better  for  trials, 
I  don't  believe  it.  Such  things  must  sour  us, 
just  as  happiness  must  sweeten  us,  and  make  us 
kinder,  and  more  gentle.  And  will  anybody 
affirm  that  it  behoves  us  to  be  more  thankful 
for  trials  than  for  blessings  ?  We  were  meant 
to  be  happy,  and  to  accept  all  the  happiness 
offered  with  thankfulness  —  indeed,  we  are  none 
of  us  ever  thankful  enough,  and  yet  we  each  get 
so  much,  so  very  much,  more  than  we  deserve. 
I  know  a  woman  —  she  stayed  with  me  last 
summer  —  who  rejoices  grimly  when  those  she 
loves  suffer.  She  believes  that  it  is  our  lot, 
and  that  it  braces  us  and  does  us  good,  and  she 


150  ELIZABETH   AND 

would  shield  no  one  from  even  unnecessary 
pain ;  she  weeps  with  the  sufferer,  but  is  con- 
vinced it  is  all  for  the  best.  Well,  let  her  con- 
tinue in  her  dreary  beliefs ;  she  has  no  garden 
to  teach  her  the  beauty  and  the  happiness  of 
holiness,  nor  does  she  in  the  least  desire  to  pos- 
sess one;  her  convictions  have  the  sad  gray 
colouring  of  the  dingy  streets  and  houses  she 
lives  amongst  —  the  sad  colour  of  humanity  in 
masses.  Submission  to  what  people  call  their 
"  lot "  is  simply  ignoble.  If  your  lot  makes  you 
cry  and  be  wretched,  get  rid  of  it  and  take 
another ;  strike  out  for  yourself;  don't  listen  to 
the  shrieks  of  your  relations,  to  their  gibes  or 
their  entreaties ;  don't  let  your  own  microscopic 
set  prescribe  your  goings-out  and  comings-in ; 
don't  be  afraid  of  public  opinion  in  the  shape 
of  the  neighbour  in  the  next  house,  when  all 
the  world  is  before  you  new  and  shining,  and 
everything  is  possible,  if  you  will  only  be  ener- 
getic and  independent  and  seize  opportunity  by 
the  scruff  of  the  neck. 

"  To  hear  you  talk,"  said  Irais,  "  no  one  would 
ever  imagine  that  you  dream  away  your  days  in 
a  garden  with  a  book,  and  that  you  never  in  your 
life  seized  anything  by  the  scruff  of  its  neck. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  151 

And  what  is  scruff?  I  hope  I  have  not  got  any 
on  me."  And  she  craned  her  neck  before  the 
glass. 

She  and  Minora  were  going  to  help  me  deco- 
rate the  trees,  but  very  soon  Irais  wandered  off 
to  the  piano,  and  Minora  was  tired  and  took  up 
a  book ;  so  I  called  in  Miss  Jones  and  the  babies 
—  it  was  Miss  Jones's  last  public  appearance, 
as  I  shall  relate  —  and  after  working  for  the  best 
part  of  two  days  they  were  finished,  and  looked 
like  lovely  ladies  in  widespreading,  sparkling 
petticoats,  holding  up  their  skirts  with  glittering 
fingers.  Minora  wrote  a  long  description  of 
them  for  a  chapter  of  her  book  which  is  headed 
Noel,  —  I  saw  that  much,  because  she  left  it 
open  on  the  table  while  she  went  to  talk  to  Miss 
Jones.  They  were  fast  friends  from  the  very 
first,  and  though  it  is  said  to  be  natural  to  take 
to  one's  own  countrymen,  I  am  unable  altogether 
to  sympathise  with  such  a  reason  for  sudden 
affection. 

"  I  wonder  what  they  talk  about  ? "  I  said  to 
Irais  yesterday,  when  there  was  no  getting 
Minora  to  come  to  tea,  so  deeply  was  she  en- 
gaged in  conversation  with  Miss  JoneSc 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  how  can    I    tell  ?     Lovers,  I 


152  ELIZABETH   AND 

suppose,  or  else  they  think  they  are  clever,  and 
then  they  talk  rubbish." 

"  Well,  of  course,  Minora  thinks  she  is 
clever." 

"  I  suppose  she  does.  What  does  it  matter 
what  she  thinks  ?  Why  does  your  governess 
look  so  gloomy  ?  When  I  see  her  at  luncheon 
I  always  imagine  she  must  have  just  heard  that 
somebody  is  dead.  But  she  can't  hear  that  every 
day.  What  is  the  matter  with  her  ? " 

"  I  don't  think  she  feels  quite  as  proper  as  she 
looks,"  I  said  doubtfully ;  I  was  for  ever  trying 
to  account  for  Miss  Jones's  expression. 

"  But  that  must  be  rather  nice,"  said  Irais. 
"  It  would  be  awful  for  her  if  she  felt  exactly 
the  same  as  she  looks." 

At  that  moment  the  door  leading  into  the 
schoolroom  opened  softly,  and  the  April  baby, 
tired  of  playing,  came  in  and  sat  down  at  my 
feet,  leaving  the  door  open  ;  and  this  is  what  we 
heard  Miss  Jones  saying  — 

"  Parents  are  seldom  wise,  and  the  strain  the 
conscientious  place  upon  themselves  to  appear 
so  before  their  children  and  governess  must  be 
terrible.  Nor  are  clergymen  more  pious  than 
other  men,  yet  they  have  continually  to  pose 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  153 

before  their  flock  as  such.  As  for  governesses, 
Miss  Minora,  I  know  what  I  am  saying  when  I 
affirm  that  there  is  nothing  more  intolerable  than 
to  have  to  be  polite,  and  even  humble,  to  persons 
whose  weaknesses  and  follies  are  glaringly  ap- 
parent in  every  word  they  utter,  and  to  be  forced 
by  the  presence  of  children  and  employers  to  a 
dignity  of  manner  in  no  way  corresponding  to 
one's  feelings.  The  grave  father  of  a  family, 
who  was  probably  one  of  the  least  respectable 
of  bachelors,  is  an  interesting  study  at  his  own 
table,  where  he  is  constrained  to  assume  airs  of 
infallibility  merely  because  his  children  are  look- 
ing at  him.  The  fact  of  his  being  a  parent  does 
not  endow  him  with  any  supreme  and  sudden 
virtue ;  and  I  can  assure  you  that  among  the 
eyes  fixed  upon  him,  not  the  least  critical  and 
amused  are  those  of  the  humble  person  who 
fills  the  post  of  governess." 

"  Oh,  Miss  Jones,  how  lovely  ! "  we  heard 
Minora  say  in  accents  of  rapture,  while  we  sat 
transfixed  with  horror  at  these  sentiments.  "  Do 
you  mind  if  I  put  that  down  in  my  book  ?  You 
say  it  all  so  beautifully." 

"  Without  a  few  hours  of  relaxation,"  continued 
Miss  Jones,  "  of  private  indemnification  for  the 


154  ELIZABETH   AND 

toilsome  virtues  displayed  in  public,  who  could 
wade  through  days  of  correct  behaviour  ?  There 
would  be  no  reaction,  no  room  for  better  impulses, 
no  place  for  repentance.  Parents,  priests,  and 
governesses  would  be  in  the  situation  of  a  stout 
lady  who  never  has  a  quiet  moment  in  which  she 
can  take  off  her  corsets." 

"  My  dear,  what  a  firebrand !  "  whispered  Irais. 
I  got  up  and  went  in.  They  were  sitting  on  the 
sofa,  Minora  with  clasped  hands,  gazing  admir- 
ingly into  Miss  Jones's  face,  which  wore  a 
very  different  expression  from  the  one  of  sour 
and  unwilling  propriety  I  have  been  used  to 
seeing. 

"  May  I  ask  you  to  come  to  tea  ?  "  I  said  to 
Minora.  "  And  I  should  like  to  have  the  chil- 
dren a  little  while." 

She  got  up  very  reluctantly,  but  I  waited  with 
the  door  open  until  she  had  gone  in  and  the  two 
babies  had  followed.  They  had  been  playing  at 
stuffing  each  other's  ears  with  pieces  of  news- 
paper while  Miss  Jones  provided  Minora  with 
noble  thoughts  for  her  work,  and  had  to  be  tor- 
tured afterward  with  tweezers.  I  said  nothing  to 
Minora,  but  kept  her  with  us  till  dinner-time,  and 
this  morning  we  went  for  a  long  sleigh-drive. 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  155 

When  we  came  in  to  lunch  there  was  no  Miss 
Jones. 

"  Is  Miss  Jones  ill  ?  "  asked  Minora. 

"  She  is  gone,"  I  said. 

"  Gone  ?  " 

"  Did  you  never  hear  of  such  things  as  sick 
mothers  ?  "  asked  Irais  blandly ;  and  we  talked 
resolutely  of  something  else. 

All  the  afternoon  Minora  has  moped.  She  had 
found  a  kindred  spirit,  and  it  has  been  ruthlessly 
torn  from  her  arms  as  kindred  spirits  so  often  are. 
It  is  enough  to  make  her  mope,  and  it  is  not  her 
fault,  poor  thing,  that  she  should  have  preferred 
the  society  of  a  Miss  Jones  to  that  of  Irais  and 
myself. 

At  dinner  Irais  surveyed  her  with  her  head  on 
one  side.  "  You  look  so  pale,"  she  said ;  "  are 
you  not  well  ?  " 

Minora  raised  her  eyes  heavily,  with  the 
patient  air  of  one  who  likes  to  be  thought  a 
sufferer.  "  I  have  a  slight  headache,"  she  re- 
plied gently. 

"  I  hope  you  are  not  going  to  be  ill,"  said  Irais 
with  great  concern,  "  because  there  is  only  a  cow- 
doctor  to  be  had  here,  and  though  he  means  well, 
I  believe  he  is  rather  rough." 


156  ELIZABETH   AND 

Minora  was  plainly  startled.  "  But  what  do 
you  do  if  you  are  ill  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  Oh,  we  are  never  ill,"  said  I ;  "  the  very 
knowledge  that  there  would  be  no  one  to  cure 
us  seems  to  keep  us  healthy." 

"  And  if  any  one  takes  to  her  bed,"  said  Irais, 
"  Elizabeth  always  calls  in  the  cow-doctor." 

Minora  was  silent.  She  feels,  I  am  sure,  that 
she  has  got  into  a  part  of  the  world  peopled  solely 
by  barbarians,  and  that  the  only  civilised  creature 
besides  herself  has  departed  and  left  her  at  our 
mercy.  Whatever  her  reflections  may  be  her 
symptoms  are  visibly  abating. 

January  ist.  —  The  service  on  New  Year's 
Eve  is  the  only  one  in  the  whole  year  that  in  the 
least  impresses  me  in  our  little  church,  and  then 
the  very  bareness  and  ugliness  of  the  place  and 
the  ceremonial  produce  an  effect  that  a  snug  ser- 
vice in  a  well-lit  church  never  would.  Last  night 
we  took  Irais  and  Minora,  and  drove  the  three 
lonely  miles  in  a  sleigh.  It  was  pitch-dark, 
and  blowing  great  guns.  We  sat  wrapped  up 
to  our  eyes  in  furs,  and  as  mute  as  a  funeral 
procession. 

"  We  are  going  to  the  burial  of  our  last  year's 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  157 

sins,"  said  Irais,  as  we  started ;  and  there  cer- 
tainly was  a  funereal  sort  of  feeling  in  the  air. 
Up  in  our  gallery  pew  we  tried  to  decipher  our 
chorales  by  the  light  of  the  spluttering  tallow 
candles  stuck  in  holes  in  the  woodwork,  the 
flames  wildly  blown  about  by  the  draughts.  The 
wind  banged  against  the  windows  in  great  gusts, 
screaming  louder  than  the  organ,  and  threatening 
to  blow  out  the  agitated  lights  together.  The 
parson  in  his  gloomy  pulpit,  surrounded  by  a 
framework  of  dusty  carved  angels,  took  on  an 
awful  appearance  of  menacing  Authority  as  he 
raised  his  voice  to  make  himself  heard  above  the 
clatter.  Sitting  there  in  the  dark,  I  felt  very 
small,  and  solitary,  and  defenceless,  alone  in  a 
great,  big,  black  world.  The  church  was  as  cold 
as  a  tomb ;  some  of  the  candles  guttered  and 
went  out;  the  parson  in  his  black  robe  spoke  of 
death  and  judgment ;  I  thought  I  heard  a  child's 
voice  screaming,  and  could  hardly  believe  it  was 
only  the  wind,  and  felt  uneasy  and  full  of  fore- 
bodings ;  all  my  faith  and  philosophy  deserted 
me,  and  I  had  a  horrid  feeling  that  I  should 
probably  be  well  punished,  though  for  what  I 
had  no  precise  idea.  If  it  had  not  been  so  dark, 
and  if  the  wind  had  not  howled  so  despairingly, 


158  ELIZABETH   AND 

I  should  have  paid  little  attention  to  the  threats 
issuing  from  the  pulpit ;  but,  as  it  was,  I  fell  to 
making  good  resolutions.  This  is  always  a  bad 
sign,  —  only  those  who  break  them  make  them; 
and  if  you  simply  do  as  a  matter  of  course  that 
which  is  right  as  it  comes,  any  preparatory  resolv- 
ing to  do  so  becomes  completely  superfluous.  I 
have  for  some  years  past  left  off  making  them  on 
New  Year's  Eve,  and  only  the  gale  happening  as 
it  did  reduced  me  to  doing  so  last  night ;  for  I 
have  long  since  discovered  that,  though  the  year 
and  the  resolutions  may  be  new,  I  myself  am  not, 
and  it  is  worse  than  useless  putting  new  wine  into 
old  bottles. 

"  But  I  am  not  an  old  bottle,"  said  Irais  indig- 
nantly, when  I  held  forth  to  her  to  the  above 
effect  a  few  hours  later  in  the  library,  restored  to 
all  my  philosophy  by  the  warmth  and  light,  "and 
I  find  my  resolutions  carry  me  very  nicely  into 
the  spring.  I  revise  them  at  the  end  of  each 
month,  and  strike  out  the  unnecessary  ones.  By 
the  end  of  April  they  have  been  so  severely  re- 
vised that  there  are  none  left." 

"  There,  you  see  I  am  right ;  if  you  were  not 
an  old  bottle  your  new  contents  would  gradually 
arrange  themselves  amiably  as  a  part  of  you,  and 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  159 

the  practice  of  your  resolutions  would  lose  its  bit- 
terness by  becoming  a  habit." 

She  shook  her  head.  "  Such  things  never  lose 
their  bitterness,"  she  said,  "  and  that  is  why  I 
don't  let  them  cling  to  me  right  into  the  summer. 
When  May  comes,  I  give  myself  up  to  jollity 
with  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  am  too  busy 
being  happy  to  bother  about  anything  I  may  have 
resolved  when  the  days  were  cold  and  dark." 

"  And  that  is  just  why  I  love  you,"  I  thought. 
She  often  says  what  I  feel. 

"  I  wonder,"  she  went  on  after  a  pause, 
"  whether  men  ever  make  resolutions  ?  " 

"  I  don't  think  they  do.  Only  women  indulge 
in  such  luxuries.  It  is  a  nice  sort  of  feeling, 
when  you  have  nothing  else  to  do,  giving  way  to 
endless  grief  and  penitence,  and  steeping  yourself 
to  the  eyes  in  contrition  ;  but  it  is  silly.  Why  cry 
over  things  that  are  done  ?  Why  do  naughty 
things  at  all,  if  you  are  going  to  repent  afterward  ? 
Nobody  is  naughty  unless  they  like  being 
naughty ;  and  nobody  ever  really  repents  unless 
they  are  afraid  they  are  going  to  be  found  out." 

"  By  c  nobody  '  of  course  you  mean  women," 
said  Irais. 

"  Naturally  ;  the  terms  are  synonymous.     Be- 


i6o  ELIZABETH   AND 

sides,  men  generally  have  the  courage  of  their 
opinions." 

"  I  hope  you  are  listening,  Miss  Minora,"  said 
Irais  in  the  amiably  polite  tone  she  assumes  when- 
ever she  speaks  to  that  young  person. 

It  was  getting  on  towards  midnight,  and  we 
were  sitting  round  the  fire,  waiting  for  the  New 
Year,  and  sipping  Glubwein,  prepared  at  a  small 
table  by  the  Man  of  Wrath.  It  was  hot,  and 
sweet,  and  rather  nasty,  but  it  is  proper  to  drink 
it  on  this  one  night,  so  of  course  we  did. 

Minora  does  not  like  either  Irais  or  myself. 
We  very  soon  discovered  that,  and  laugh  about  it 
when  we  are  alone  together.  I  can  understand 
her  disliking  Irais,  but  she  must  be  a  perverse 
creature  not  to  like  me.  Irais  has  poked  fun  at 
her,  and  I  have  been,  I  hope,  very  kind ;  yet  we 
are  bracketed  together  in  her  black  books.  It  is 
also  apparent  that  she  looks  upon  the  Man  of 
Wrath  as  an  interesting  example  of  an  ill-used 
and  misunderstood  husband,  and  she  is  disposed 
to  take  him  under  her  wing,  and  defend  him  on  all 
occasions  against  us.  He  never  speaks  to  her ; 
he  is  at  all  times  a  man  of  few  words,  but,  as  far 
as  Minora  is  concerned,  he  might  have  no  tongue 
at  all,  and  sits  sphinx-like  and  impenetrable  while 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  161 

she  takes  us  to  task  about  some  remark  of  a  pro- 
fane nature  that  we  may  have  addressed  to  him. 
One  night,  some  days  after  her  arrival,  she  de- 
veloped a  skittishness  of  manner  which  has  since 
disappeared,  and  tried  to  be  playful  with  him  ; 
but  you  might  as  well  try  to  be  playful  with  a 
graven  image.  The  wife  of  one  of  the  servants 
had  just  produced  a  boy,  the  first  after  a  series  of 
five  daughters,  and  at  dinner  we  drank  the  health 
of  all  parties  concerned,  the  Man  of  Wrath  mak- 
ing the  happy  father  drink  a  glass  off  at  one  gulp, 
his  heels  well  together  in  military  fashion.  Mi- 
nora  thought  the  incident  typical  of  German 
manners,  and  not  only  made  notes  about  it,  but 
joined  heartily  in  the  health-drinking,  and  after- 
ward grew  skittish. 

She  proposed,  first  of  all,  to  teach  us  a  dance 
called,  I  think,  the  Washington  Post,  and  which 
was,  she  said,  much  danced  in  England ;  and,  to 
induce  us  to  learn,  she  played  the  tune  to  us 
on  the  piano.  We  remained  untouched  by  its 
beauties,  each  buried  in  an  easy-chair  toasting 
our  toes  at  the  fire.  Amongst  those  toes  were 
those  of  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who  sat  peaceably 
reading  a  book  and  smoking.  Minora  volun- 
teered to  show  us  the  steps,  and  as  we  still  did 


1 62  ELIZABETH   AND 

not  move,  danced  solitary  behind  our  chairs. 
Irais  did  not  even  turn  her  head  to  look,  and  I 
was  the  only  one  amiable  or  polite  enough  to  do 
so.  Do  I  deserve  to  be  placed  in  Minora's  list 
of  disagreeable  people  side  by  side  with  Irais  ? 
Certainly  not.  Yet  I  most  surely  am. 

"  It  wants  the  music,  of  course,"  observed 
Minora  breathlessly,  darting  in  and  out  between 
the  chairs,  apparently  addressing  me,  but  glancing 
at  the  Man  of  Wrath. 

No  answer  from  anybody. 

"  It  is  such  a  pretty  dance,"  she  panted  again, 
after  a  few  more  gyrations. 

No  answer. 

"And  is  all  the  rage  at  home." 

No  answer. 

"  Do  let  me  teach  you.  Won't  you  try,  Herr 
Sage?" 

She  went  up  to  him  and  dropped  him  a  little 
curtesy.  It  is  thus  she  always  addresses  him, 
entirely  oblivious  to  the  fact,  so  patent  to  every 
one  else,  that  he  resents  it. 

"  Oh  come,  put  away  that  tiresome  old  book," 
she  went  on  gaily,  as  he  did  not  move ;  "  I  am  cer- 
tain it  is  only  some  dry  agricultural  work  that  you 
just  nod  over.  Dancing  is  much  better  for  you." 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  163 

Irais  and  I  looked  at  one  another  quite  fright- 
ened. I  am  sure  we  both  turned  pale  when  the 
unhappy  girl  actually  laid  hold  forcibly  of  his 
book,  and,  with  a  playful  little  shriek,  ran  away 
with  it  into  the  next  room,  hugging  it  to  her 
bosom  and  looking  back  roguishly  over  her 
shoulder  at  him  as  she  ran.  There  was  an  awful 
pause.  We  hardly  dared  raise  our  eyes.  Then 
the  Man  of  Wrath  got  up  slowly,  knocked  the 
ashes  off  the  end  of  his  cigar,  looked  at  his  watch, 
and  went  out  at  the  opposite  door  into  his  own 
rooms,  where  he  stayed  for  the  rest  of  the  even- 
ing. She  has  never,  I  must  say,  been  skittish  since. 

"  I  hope  you  are  listening,  Miss  Minora,"  said 
Irais,  "because  this  sort  of  conversation  is  likely 
to  do  you  good." 

"  I  always  listen  when  people  talk  sensibly," 
replied  Minora,  stirring  her  grog. 

Irais  glanced  at  her  with  slightly  doubtful  eye- 
brows. "  Do  you  agree  with  our  hostess's  de- 
scription of  women  ?  "  she  asked  after  a  pause. 

"  As  nobodies  ?     No,  of  course  I  do  not." 

"  Yet  she  is  right.  In  the  eye  of  the  law  we 
are  literally  nobodies  in  our  country.  Did  you 
know  that  women  are  forbidden  to  go  to  political 
meetings  here? " 


1 64  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  Really  ?  "     Out  came  the  note-book. 

"  The  law  expressly  forbids  the  attendance  at 
such  meetings  of  women,  children,  and  idiots." 

"Children  and  idiots  —  I  understand  that," 
said  Minora  ;  "  but  women  —  and  classed  with 
children  and  idiots  ?  " 

"  Classed  with  children  and  idiots,"  repeated 
Irais,  gravely  nodding  her  head.  "  Did  you 
know  that  the  law  forbids  females  of  any  age  to 
ride  on  the  top  of  omnibuses  or  tramcars  ? " 

"  Not  really  ?  " 

"  Do  you  know  why  ?  " 

"  I  can't  imagine." 

"  Because  in  going  up  and  down  the  stairs 
those  inside  might  perhaps  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
stocking  covering  their  ankles." 

"But  what " 

"  Did  you  know  that  the  morals  of  the  German 
public  are  in  such  a  shaky  condition  that  a  glimpse 
of  that  sort  would  be  fatal  to  them  ?  " 

"  But  I  don't  see  how  a  stocking " 

"With  stripes  round  it,"  said  Irais. 

"And  darns  in  it,"  I  added. 

"  —  could  possibly  be  pernicious?  " 

"  {  The  Pernicious  Stocking  ;  or,  Thoughts  on 
the  Ethics  of  Petticoats,'  "  said  Irais.  "  Put 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  165 

that  down  as  the  name  of  your  next  book  on 
Germany." 

"  I  never  know,"  complained  Minora,  letting 
her  note-book  fall,  "whether  you  are  in  earnest 
or  not." 

"  Don't  you  ?  "  said  Irais  sweetly. 

"  Is  it  true,"  appealed  Minora  to  the  Man  of 
Wrath,  busy  with  his  lemons  in  the  background, 
"  that  your  law  classes  women  with  children  and 
idiots  ? " 

"  Certainly,"  he  answered  promptly,  "  and  a 
very  proper  classification,  too." 

We  all  looked  blank.  "  That's  rude,"  said  I 
at  last. 

"Truth  is  always  rude,  my  dear,"  he  replied 
complacently.  Then  he  added,  "  If  I  were  com- 
missioned to  draw  up  a  new  legal  code,  and  had 
previously  enjoyed  the  privilege,  as  I  have  been 
doing  lately,  of  listening  to  the  conversation  of 
you  three  young  ladies,  I  should  make  precisely 
the  same  classification." 

Even  Minora  was  incensed  at  this. 

"You  are  telling  us  in  the  most  unvarnished 
manner  that  we  are  idiots,"  said  Irais. 

"  Idiots  ?  No,  no,  by  no  means.  But  children, 
— nice  little  agreeable  children.  I  very  much  like 


1 66  ELIZABETH   AND 

to  hear  you  talk  together.  It  is  all  so  young  and 
fresh  what  you  think  and  what  you  believe,  and 
not  of  the  least  consequence  to  any  one." 

"  Not  of  the  least  consequence  ?  "  cried  Mi- 
nora.  "  What  we  believe  is  of  very  great  conse- 
quence indeed  to  us." 

"  Are  you  jeering  at  our  beliefs  ? "  inquired 
Irais  sternly. 

"  Not  for  worlds.  I  would  not  on  any  account 
disturb  or  change  your  pretty  little  beliefs.  It 
is  your  chief  charm  that  you  always  believe  every- 
thing. How  desperate  would  our  case  be  if 
young  ladies  only  believed  facts,  and  never  ac- 
cepted another  person's  assurance,  but  preferred 
the  evidence  of  their  own  eyes  !  They  would 
have  no  illusions,  and  a  woman  without  illusions 
is  the  dreariest  and  most  difficult  thing  to  manage 
possible." 

"  Thing  ?  "  protested  Irais. 

The  Man  of  Wrath,  usually  so  silent,  makes 
up  for  it  from  time  to  time  by  holding  forth  at 
unnecessary  length.  He  took  up  his  stand  now 
with  his  back  to  the  fire,  and  a  glass  of  Glubwein 
in  his  hand.  Minora  had  hardly  heard  his  voice 
before,  so  quiet  had  he  been  since  she  came, 
and  sat  with  her  pencil  raised,  ready  to  fix  for 


HER  GERMAN    GARDEN  167 

ever  the  wisdom  that  should  flow  from  his 
lips. 

"  What  would  become  of  poetry  if  women 
became  so  sensible  that  they  turned  a  deaf  ear 
to  the  poetic  platitudes  of  love  ?  That  love  does 
indulge  in  platitudes  I  suppose  you  will  admit." 
He  looked  at  Irais. 

"  Yes,  they  all  say  exactly  the  same  thing," 
she  acknowledged. 

"  Who  could  murmur  pretty  speeches  on  the 
beauty  of  a  common  sacrifice,  if  the  listener's 
want  of  imagination  was  such  as  to  enable  her 
only  to  distinguish  one  victim  in  the  picture,  and 
that  one  herself?  " 

Minora  took  that  down  word  for  word, — 
much  good  may  it  do  her. 

"  Who  would  be  brave  enough  to  affirm  that 
if  refused  he  will  die,  if  his  assurances  merely 
elicit  a  recommendation  to  diet  himself,  and  take 
plenty  of  outdoor  exercise  ?  Women  are  respon- 
sible for  such  lies,  because  they  believe  them. 
Their  amazing  vanity  makes  them  swallow  flat- 
tery so  gross  that  it  is  an  insult,  and  men  will 
always  be  ready  to  tell  the  precise  number  of  lies 
that  a  woman  is  ready  to  listen  to.  Who  indulges 
more  recklessly  in  glowing  exaggerations  than 


1 68  ELIZABETH    AND 

the  lover  who  hopes,  and  has  not  yet  obtained  ^ 
He  will,  like  the  nightingale,  sing  with  unceas- 
ing modulations,  display  all  his  talent,  untir- 
ingly repeat  his  sweetest  notes,  until  he  has 
what  he  wants,  when  his  song,  like  the  night- 
ingale's, immediately  ceases,  never  again  to  be 
heard." 

"  Take  that  down,"  murmured  Irais  aside  to 
Minora  —  unnecessary  advice,  for  her  pencil  was 
scribbling  as  fast  as  it  could. 

"A  woman's  vanity  is  so  immeasurable  that, 
after  having  had  ninety-nine  object-lessons  in  the 
difference  between  promise  and  performance  and 
the  emptiness  of  pretty  speeches,  the  beginning 
of  the  hundredth  will  find  her  lending  the  same 
willing  and  enchanted  ear  to  the  eloquence  of 
flattery  as  she  did  on  the  occasion  of  the  first. 
What  can  the  exhortations  of  the  strong-minded 
sister,  who  has  never  had  these  experiences,  do 
for  such  a  woman  ?  It  is  useless  to  tell  her  she 
is  man's  victim,  that  she  is  his  plaything,  that 
she  is  cheated,  down-trodden,  kept  under,  laughed 
at,  shabbily  treated  in  every  way  —  that  is  not 
a  true  statement  of  the  case.  She  is  simply  the 
victim  of  her  own  vanity,  and  against  that,  against 
the  belief  in  her  own  fascinations,  against  the  very 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  169 

part  of  herself  that  gives  all  the  colour  to  her  life, 
who  shall  expect  a  woman  to  take  up  arms  ? " 

"  Are  you  so  vain,  Elizabeth  ?  "  inquired  Irais 
with  a  shocked  face,  "  and  had  you  lent  a  willing 
ear  to  the  blandishments  of  ninety-nine  before 
you  reached  your  final  destiny  ?  " 

"  I  am  one  of  the  sensible  ones,  I  suppose,"  I 
replied,  "  for  nobody  ever  wanted  me  to  listen  to 
blandishments." 

Minora  sighed. 

"  I  like  to  hear  you  talk  together  about  the 
position  of  women,"  he  went  on,  "  and  wonder 
when  you  will  realise  that  they  hold  exactly  the 
position  they  are  fitted  for.  As  soon  as  they  are 
fit  to  occupy  a  better,  no  power  on  earth  will  be 
able  to  keep  them  out  of  it.  Meanwhile,  let  me 
warn  you  that,  as  things  now  are,  only  strong- 
minded  women  wish  to  see  you  the  equals  of 
men,  and  the  strong-minded  are  invariably  plain. 
The  pretty  ones  would  rather  see  men  their  slaves 
than  their  equals." 

"You  know,"  said  Irais,  frowning,  "that  I 
consider  myself  strong-minded." 

"  And  never  rise  till  lunch-time  ?  " 

Irais  blushed.  Although  I  don't  approve  of 
such  conduct,  it  is  very  convenient  in  more  ways 


1 70  ELIZABETH   AND 

than  one  ;  I  get  through  my  housekeeping  undis- 
turbed, and  whenever  she  is  disposed  to  lecture 
me,  I  begin  about  this  habit  of  hers.  Her  con- 
science must  be  terribly  stricken  on  the  point, 
for  she  is  by  no  means  as  a  rule  given  to  meek- 
ness. 

"  A  woman  without  vanity  would  be  unattack- 
able,"  resumed  the  Man  of  Wrath.  "  When  a 
girl  enters  that  downward  path  that  leads  to  ruin, 
she  is  led  solely  by  her  own  vanity ;  for  in  these 
days  of  policemen  no  young  woman  can  be  forced 
against  her  will  from  the  path  of  virtue,  and  the 
cries  of  the  injured  are  never  heard  until  the 
destroyer  begins  to  express  his  penitence  for 
having  destroyed.  If  his  passion  could  remain 
at  white-heat  and  he  could  continue  to  feed  her 
ear  with  the  protestations  she  loves,  no  principles 
of  piety  or  virtue  would  disturb  the  happiness  of 
his  companion ;  for  a  mournful  experience  teaches 
that  piety  begins  only  where  passion  ends,  and 
that  principles  are  strongest  where  temptations 
are  most  rare." 

"But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  us?"  I 
inquired  severely. 

"  You  were  displeased  at  our  law  classing  you 
as  it  does,  and  I  merely  wish  to  justify  it,"  he 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  171 

answered.  "Creatures  who  habitually  say  yes  to 
everything  a  man  proposes,  when  no  one  can 
oblige  them  to  say  it,  and  when  it  is  so  often 
fatal,  are  plainly  not  responsible  beings." 

"  I  shall  never  say  it  to  you  again,  my  dear 
man,"  I  said. 

"  And  not  only  that  fatal  weakness,"  he  con- 
tinued, "but  what  is  there,  candidly,  to  distin- 
guish you  from  children  ?  You  are  older,  but 
not  wiser,  —  really  not  so  wise,  for  with  years 
you  lose  the  common  sense  you  had  as  chil- 
dren. Have  you  ever  heard  a  group  of  women 
talking  reasonably  together  ?  " 

"Yes  —  we  do  !  "  Irais  and  I  cried  in  a  breath. 

"It  has  interested  me,"  went  on  the  Man  of 
Wrath,  "in  my  idle  moments,  to  listen  to  their 
talk.  It  amused  me  to  hear  the  malicious  little 
stories  they  told  of  their  best  friends  who  were 
absent,  to  note  the  spiteful  little  digs  they  gave 
their  best  friends  who  were  present,  to  watch  the 
utter  incredulity  with  which  they  listened  to  the 
tale  of  some  other  woman's  conquests,  the  radiant 
good  faith  they  displayed  in  connection  with  their 
own,  the  instant  collapse  into  boredom,  if  some 
topic  of  so-called  general  interest,  by  some  extraor- 
dinary chance,  were  introduced." 


172  ELIZABETH   AND 

"You  must  have  belonged  to  a  particularly 
nice  set,"  remarked  Irais. 

"  And  as  for  politics,"  he  said,  "  I  have  never 
heard  them  mentioned  among  women." 

"  Children  and  idiots  are  not  interested  in  such 
things,"  I  said. 

"  And  we  are  much  too  frightened  of  being 
put  in  prison,"  said  Irais. 

"  In  prison  ?  "  echoed  Minora. 

"  Don't  you  know,"  said  Irais,  turning  to  her 
"  that  if  you  talk  about  such  things  here  you  run 
a  great  risk  of  being  imprisoned?  " 

"  But  why  ?  " 

"  But  why  ?  Because,  though  you  yourself 
may  have  meant  nothing  but  what  was  innocent, 
your  words  may  have  suggested  something  less 
innocent  to  the  evil  minds  of  your  hearers ;  and 
then  the  law  steps  in,  and  calls  it  dolus  eventualis, 
and  everybody  says  how  dreadful,  and  off  you 
go  to  prison  and  are  punished  as  you  deserve 
to  be." 

Minora  looked  mystified. 

"That  is  not,  however,  your  real  reason  for  not 
discussing  them,"  said  the  Man  of  Wrath  ;  "  they 
simply  do  not  interest  you.  Or  it  may  be,  that 
you  do  not  consider  your  female  friends'  opinions 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  173 

worth  listening  to,  for  you  certainly  display  an 
astonishing  thirst  for  information  when  male  poli- 
ticians are  present.  I  have  seen  a  pretty  young 
woman,  hardly  in  her  twenties,  sitting  a  whole 
evening  drinking  in  the  doubtful  wisdom  of  an 
elderly  political  star,  with  every  appearance  of 
eager  interest.  He  was  a  bimetallic  star,  and  was 
giving  her  whole  pamphletsful  of  information." 

"  She  wanted  to  make  up  to  him  for  some 
reason,"  said  Irais,  "  and  got  him  to  explain  his 
hobby  to  her,  and  he  was  silly  enough  to  be  taken 
in.  Now  which  was  the  sillier  in  that  case  ?  " 

She  threw  herself  back  in  her  chair  and  looked 
up  defiantly,  beating  her  foot  impatiently  on  the 
carpet. 

"  She  wanted  to  be  thought  clever,"  said  the 
Man  of  Wrath.  "  What  puzzled  me,"  he  went 
on  musingly,  "was  that  she  went  away  apparently 
as  serene  and  happy  as  when  she  came.  The 
explanation  of  the  principles  of  bimetallism  pro- 
duce, as  a  rule,  a  contrary  effect." 

"  Why,  she  hadn't  been  listening,"  cried  Irais, 
"and  your  simple  star  had  been  making  a  fine 
goose  of  himself  the  whole  evening. 

"  Prattle,  prattle,  simple  star, 
Bimetallic,  wunderbar. 


1/4  ELIZABETH    AND 

Though  you're  given  to  describe 
Woman  as  a  dummes  Weib. 
You  yourself  are  sillier  far, 
Prattling,  bimetallic  star  !  " 

"  No  doubt  she  had  understood  very  little," 
said  the  Man  of  Wrath,  taking  no  notice  of  this 
effusion. 

"  And  no  doubt  the  gentleman  hadn't  under- 
stood much  either."  Irais  was  plainly  irritated. 

"Your  opinion  of  woman,"  said  Minora  in  a 
very  small  voice,  "  is  not  a  high  one.  But,  in 
the  sick  chamber,  I  suppose  you  agree  that  no 
one  could  take  her  place  ?  " 

"  If  you  are  thinking  of  hospital-nurses,"  I 
said,  "  I  must  tell  you  that  I  believe  he  mar- 
ried chiefly  that  he  might  have  a  wife  instead 
of  a  strange  woman  to  nurse  him  when  he  is 
sick." 

"  But,"  said  Minora,  bewildered  at  the  way 
her  illusions  were  being  knocked  about,  "  the 
sick-room  is  surely  the  very  place  of  all  others 
in  which  a  woman's  gentleness  and  tact  are  most 
valuable." 

"Gentleness  and  tact?"  repeated  the  Man  of 
Wrath.  "  I  have  never  met  those  qualities  in 
the  professional  nurse.  According  to  my  experi- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  175 

ence,  she  is  a  disagreeable  person  who  finds  in 
private  nursing  exquisite  opportunities  for  assert- 
ing her  superiority  over  ordinary  and  prostrate 
mankind.  I  know  of  no  more  humiliating  posi- 
tion for  a  man  than  to  be  in  bed  having  his 
feverish  brow  soothed  by  a  sprucely-dressed 
strange  woman,  bristling  with  starch  and  spot- 
lessness.  He  would  give  half  his  income  for  his 
clothes,  and  probably  the  other  half  if  she  would 
leave  him  alone,  and  go  away  altogether.  He 
feels  her  superiority  through  every  pore ;  he 
never  before  realised  how  absolutely  inferior  he 
is ;  he  is  abjectly  polite,  and  contemptibly  con- 
ciliatory;  if  a  friend  comes  to  see  him,  he  eagerly 
praises  her  in  case  she  should  be  listening  behind 
the  screen ;  he  cannot  call  his  soul  his  own,  and, 
what  is  far  more  intolerable,  neither  is  he  sure 
that  his  body  really  belongs  to  him ;  he  has  read 
of  ministering  angels  and  the  light  touch  of  a 
woman's  hand,  but  the  day  on  which  he  can  ring 
for  his  servant  and  put  on  his  socks  in  private 
fills  him  with  the  same  sort  of  wildness  of  joy 
that  he  felt  as  a  homesick  schoolboy  at  the  end 
of  his  first  term." 

Minora  was  silent.     Irais's  foot  was  livelier  than 
ever.     The  Man  of  Wrath  stood  smiling  blandly 


176  ELIZABETH   AND 

down  upon  us.  You  can't  argue  with  a  person 
so  utterly  convinced  of  his  infallibility  that  he 
won't  even  get  angry  with  you ;  so  we  sat  round 
and  said  nothing. 

"  If,"  he  went  on,  addressing  Irais,  who  looked 
rebellious,  "  you  doubt  the  truth  of  my  remarks, 
and  still  cling  to  the  old  poetic  notion  of  noble, 
self-sacrificing  women  tenderly  helping  the  patient 
over  the  rough  places  on  the  road  to  death  or 
recovery,  let  me  beg  you  to  try  for  yourself,  next 
time  any  one  in  your  house  is  ill,  whether  the 
actual  fact  in  any  way  corresponds  to  the  pictu- 
resque belief.  The  angel  who  is  to  alleviate  our 
sufferings  comes  in  such  a  questionable  shape, 
that  to  the  unimaginative  she  appears  merely  as 
an  extremely  self-confident  young  woman,  wisely 
concerned  first  of  all  in  securing  her  personal 
comfort,  much  given  to  complaints  about  her 
food  and  to  helplessness  where  she  should  be 
helpful,  possessing  an  extraordinary  capacity  for 
fancying  herself  slighted,  or  not  regarded  as  the 
superior  being  she  knows  herself  to  be,  morbidly 
anxious  lest  the  servants  should,  by  some  mistake, 
treat  her  with  offensive  cordiality,  pettish  if  the 
patient  gives  more  trouble  than  she  had  expected, 
intensely  injured  and  disagreeable  if  he  is  made  so 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  177 

courageous  by  his  wretchedness  as  to  wake  her 
during  the  night  —  an  act  of  desperation  of  which 
I  was  guilty  once,  and  once  only.  Oh,  these 
good  women  !  What  sane  man  wants  to  have  to 
do  with  angels  ?  And  especially  do  we  object  to 
having  them  about  us  when  we  are  sick  and  sorry, 
when  we  feel  in  every  fibre  what  poor  things  we 
are,  and  when  all  our  fortitude  is  needed  to  enable 
us  to  bear  our  temporary  inferiority  patiently, 
without  being  forced  besides  to  assume  an  atti- 
tude of  eager  and  grovelling  politeness  towards 
the  angel  in  the  house." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"  I  didn't  know  you  could  talk  so  much,  Sage," 
said  Irais  at  length. 

"  What  would  you  have  women  do,  then  ?  * 
asked  Minora  meekly.  Irais  began  to  beat  her 
foot  up  and  down  again,  —  what  did  it  matter 
what  Men  of  Wrath  would  have  us  do  ?  "  There 
are  not,"  continued  Minora,  blushing,  "  husbands 
enough  for  every  one,  and  the  rest  must  do  some- 
thing." 

"  Certainly,"  replied  the  oracle.  <c  Study  the 
art  of  pleasing  by  dress  and  manner  as  long  as 
you  are  of  an  age  to  interest  us,  and  above  all,  let 
all  women,  pretty  and  plain,  married  and  single, 


178  ELIZABETH   AND 

study  the  art  of  cookery.  If  you  are  an  artist  in 
the  kitchen  you  will  always  be  esteemed." 

I  sat  very  still.  Every  German  woman,  even 
the  wayward  Irais,  has  learned  to  cook ;  I  seem 
to  have  been  the  only  one  who  was  naughty  and 
wouldn't. 

"  Only  be  careful,"  he  went  on,  "  in  studying 
both  arts,  never  to  forget  the  great  truth  that 
dinner  precedes  blandishments  and  not  blandish- 
ments dinner.  A  man  must  be  made  comfort- 
able before  he  will  make  love  to  you  ;  and  though 
it  is  true  that  if  you  offered  him  a  choice  between 
Spickgans  and  kisses,  he  would  say  he  would  take 
both,  yet  he  would  invariably  begin  with  the 
SpickganSy  and  allow  the  kisses  to  wait." 

At  this  I  got  up,  and  Irais  followed  my  ex- 
ample. "  Your  cynicism  is  disgusting,"  I  said 
icily. 

"You  two  are  always  exceptions  to  anything  I 
may  say,"  he  said,  smiling  amiably. 

He  stooped  and  kissed  Irais's  hand.  She  is 
inordinately  vain  of  her  hands,  and  says  her  hus- 
band married  her  for  their  sake,  which  I  can  quite 
believe.  I  am  glad  they  are  on  her  and  not  on 
Minora,  for  if  Minora  had  had  them  I  should 
have  been  annoyed.  Minora's  are  bony,  with 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  179 

chilly-looking  knuckles,  ignored  nails,  and  too 
much  wrist.  I  feel  very  well  disposed  towards 
her  when  my  eye  falls  on  them.  She  put  one 
forward  now,  evidently  thinking  it  would  be 
kissed  too. 

"  Did  you  know,"  said  Irais,  seeing  the  move- 
ment, "  that  it  is  the  custom  here  to  kiss  women's 
hands  ? " 

"  But  only  married  women's,"  I  added,  not 
desiring  her  to  feel  out  of  it,  "  never  young  girls'." 

She  drew  it  in  again.  "  It  is  a  pretty  custom," 
she  said  with  a  sigh  ;  and  pensively  inscribed  it  in 
her  book. 

January  i$th.- — The  bills  for  my  roses  and 
bulbs  and  other  last  year's  horticultural  indulgences 
were  all  on  the  table  when  I  came  down  to  break- 
fast this  morning.  They  rather  frightened  me. 
Gardening  is  expensive,  I  find,  when  it  has  to  be 
paid  for  out  of  one's  own  private  pin-money. 
The  Man  of  Wrath  does  not  in  the  least  want 
roses,  or  flowering  shrubs,  or  plantations,  or  new 
paths,  and  therefore,  he  asks,  why  should  he  pay 
for  them  ?  So  he  does  not  and  I  do,  and  I  have 
to  make  up  for  it  by  not  indulging  all  too  riotously 
in  new  clothes,  which  is  no  doubt  very  chastening. 


i8o  ELIZABETH   AND 

I  certainly  prefer  buying  new  rose-trees  to  new 
dresses,  if  I  cannot  comfortably  have  both ;  and 
I  see  a  time  coming  when  the  passion  for  my 
garden  will  have  taken  such  a  hold  on  me  that 
I  shall  not  only  entirely  cease  buying  more  clothes, 
but  begin  to  sell  those  that  I  already  have.  The 
garden  is  so  big  that  everything  has  to  be  bought 
wholesale ;  and  I  fear  I  shall  not  be  able  to  go  on 
much  longer  with  only  one  man  and  a  stork, 
because  the  more  I  plant  the  more  there  will  be 
to  water  in  the  inevitable  drought,  and  the  water- 
ing is  a  serious  consideration  when  it  means  going 
backwards  and  forwards  all  day  long  to  a  pump 
near  the  house,  with  a  little  water-cart.  People 
living  in  England,  in  almost  perpetual  mildness 
and  moisture,  don't  really  know  what  a  drought 
is.  If  they  have  some  weeks  of  cloudless  weather, 
it  is  generally  preceded  and  followed  by  good 
rains  ;  but  we  have  perhaps  an  hour's  shower 
every  week,  and  then  comes  a  month  or  six  weeks' 
drought.  The  soil  is  very  light,  and  dries  so 
quickly  that,  after  the  heaviest  thunder-shower,  I 
can  walk  over  any  of  my  paths  in  my  thin  shoes ; 
and  to  keep  the  garden  even  moderately  damp  it 
should  pour  with  rain  regularly  every  day  for 
three  hours.  My  only  means  of  getting  water  is 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  181 

to  go  to  the  pump  near  the  house,  or  to  the  little 
stream  that  forms  my  eastern  boundary,  and  the 
little  stream  dries  up  too  unless  there  has  been 
rain,  and  is  at  the  best  of  times  difficult  to  get  at, 
having  steep  banks  covered  with  forget-me-nots. 
I  possess  one  moist,  peaty  bit  of  ground,  and  that 
is  to  be  planted  with  silver  birches  in  imitation  of 
the  Hirschwald,  and  is  to  be  carpeted  between  the 
birches  with  flaming  azaleas.  All  the  rest  of  my 
soil  is  sandy  —  the  soil  for  pines  and  acacias,  but 
not  the  soil  for  roses  ;  yet  see  what  love  will  do  — 
there  are  more  roses  in  my  garden  than  any  other 
flower !  Next  spring  the  bare  places  are  to  be 
filled  with  trees  that  I  have  ordered :  pines 
behind  the  delicate  acacias,  and  startling  moun- 
tain-ashes, oaks,  copper-beeches,  maples,  larches, 
juniper-trees  —  was  it  not  Elijah  who  sat  down 
to  rest  under  a  juniper-tree  ?  I  have  often  won- 
dered how  he  managed  to  get  under  it.  It  is 
a  compact  little  tree,  not  more  than  two  to  three 
yards  high  here,  and  all  closely  squeezed  up 
together.  Perhaps  they  grew  more  aggressively 
where  he  was.  By  the  time  the  babies  have 
grown  old  and  disagreeable  it  will  be  very  pretty 
here,  and  then  possibly  they  won't  like  it ;  and, 
if  they  have  inherited  the  Man  of  Wrath's  in- 


i8z  ELIZABETH   AND 

difference  to  gardens,  they  will  let  it  run  wild 
and  leave  it  to  return  to  the  state  in  which  I 
found  it.  Or  perhaps  their  three  husbands  will 
refuse  to  live  in  it,  or  to  come  to  such  a  lonely 
place  at  all,  and  then  of  course  its  fate  is  sealed. 
My  only  comfort  is  that  husbands  don't  flourish 
in  the  desert,  and  that  the  three  will  have  to  wait 
a  long  time  before  enough  are  found  to  go  round. 
Mothers  tell  me  that  it  is  a  dreadful  business 
finding  one  husband  ;  how  much  more  painful 
then  to  have  to  look  for  three  at  once! — the 
babies  are  so  nearly  the  same  age  that  they  only 
just  escaped  being  twins.  But  I  won't  look.  I 
can  imagine  nothing  more  uncomfortable  than  a 
son-in-law,  and  besides,  I  don't  think  a  husband 
is  at  all  a  good  thing  for  a  girl  to  have.  I  shall 
do  my  best  in  the  years  at  my  disposal  to  train 
them  so  to  love  the  garden,  and  out-door  life,  and 
even  farming,  that,  if  they  have  a  spark  of  their 
mother  in  them,  they  will  want  and  ask  for  noth- 
ing better.  My  hope  of  success  is  however 
exceedingly  small,  and  there  is  probably  a  fearful 
period  in  store  for  me  when  I  shall  be  taken 
every  day  during  the  winter  to  the  distant  towns 
to  balls  —  a  poor  old  mother  shivering  in  broad 
daylight  in  her  party  gown,  and  being  made  to 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  183 

start  after  an  early  lunch  and  not  getting  home 
till  breakfast-time  next  morning.  Indeed,  they 
have  already  developed  an  alarming  desire  to  go 
to  "  partings  "  as  they  call  them,  the  April  baby 
announcing  her  intention  of  beginning  to  do  so 
when  she  is  twelve.  "  Are  J0#  twelve,  Mummy  ?  " 
she  asked. 

The  gardener  is  leaving  on  the  first  of  April, 
and  I  am  trying  to  find  another.  It  is  grievous 
changing  so  often  —  in  two  years  I  shall  have 
had  three  —  because  at  each  change  a  great  part 
of  my  plants  and  plans  necessarily  suffers.  Seeds 
get  lost,  seedlings  are  not  pricked  out  in  time, 
places  already  sown  are  planted  with  something 
else,  and  there  is  confusion  out  of  doors  and 
despair  in  my  heart.  But  he  was  to  have  married 
the  cook,  and  the  cook  saw  a  ghost  and  immedi- 
ately left,  and  he  is  going  after  her  as  soon  as 
he  can,  and  meanwhile  is  wasting  visibly  away. 
What  she  saw  was  doors  that  are  locked  opening 
with  a  great  clatter  all  by  themselves  on  the  hinge- 
side^  and  then  somebody  invisible  cursed  at  her. 
These  phenomena  now  go  by  the  name  of  "  the 
ghost."  She  asked  to  be  allowed  to  leave  at 
once,  as  she  had  never  been  in  a  place  where 
there  was  a  ghost  before.  I  suggested  that  she 


184  ELIZABETH   AND 

should  try  and  get  used  to  it ;  but  she  thought 
it  would  be  wasting  time,  and  she  looked  so  ill 
that  I  let  her  go,  and  the  garden  has  to  suffer. 
I  don't  know  why  it  should  be  given  to  cooks 
to  see  such  interesting  things  and  withheld  from 
me,  but  I  have  had  two  others  since  she  left,  and 
they  both  have  seen  the  ghost.  Minora  grows 
very  silent  as  bed-time  approaches,  and  relents 
towards  Irais  and  myself;  and,  after  having  shown 
us  all  day  how  little  she  approves  us,  when  the 
bedroom  candles  are  brought  she  quite  begins  to 
cling.  She  has  once  or  twice  anxiously  inquired 
whether  Irais  is  sure  she  does  not  object  to  sleep- 
ing alone. 

"If  you  are  at  all  nervous,  I  will  come  and 
keep  you  company,"  she  said ;  "  I  don't  mind 
at  all,  I  assure  you." 

But  Irais  is  not  to  be  taken  in  by  such  simple 
wiles,  and  has  told  me  she  would  rather  sleep 
with  fifty  ghosts  than  with  one  Minora. 

Since  Miss  Jones  was  so  unexpectedly  called 
away  to  her  parent's  bedside  I  have  seen  a  good 
deal  of  the  babies ;  and  it  is  so  nice  without  a 
governess  that  I  would  put  off  engaging  another 
for  a  year  or  two,  if  it  were  not  that  I  should  in 
so  doing  come  within  the  reach  of  the  arm  of  the 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  185 

law,  which  is  what  every  German  spends  his  life 
in  trying  to  avoid.  The  April  baby  will  be  six 
next  month,  and,  after  her  sixth  birthday  is 
passed,  we  are  liable  at  any  moment  to  receive 
a  visit  from  a  school  inspector,  who  will  inquire 
curiously  into  the  state  of  her  education,  and,  if 
it  is  not  up  to  the  required  standard,  all  sorts  of 
fearful  things  might  happen  to  the  guilty  parents, 
probably  beginning  with  fines,  and  going  on 
crescendo  to  dungeons  if,  owing  to  gaps  between 
governesses  and  difficulties  in  finding  the  right 
one,  we  persisted  in  our  evil  courses.  Shades 
of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close  here  upon 
the  growing  boy,  and  prisons  compass  the 
Teuton  about  on  every  side  all  through  life 
to  such  an  extent  that  he  has  to  walk  very  deli- 
cately indeed  if  he  would  stay  outside  them  and 
pay  for  their  maintenance.  Cultured  individ- 
uals do  not,  as  a  rule,  neglect  to  teach  their 
offspring  to  read,  and  write,  and  say  their 
prayers,  and  are  apt  to  resent  the  intrusion  of 
an  examining  inspector  into  their  homes ;  but 
it  does  not  much  matter  after  all,  and  I  daresay 
it  is  very  good  for  us  to  be  worried ;  indeed,  a 
philosopher  of  my  acquaintance  declares  that 
people  who  are  not  regularly  and  properly  wor- 


1 86  ELIZABETH   AND 

ried  are  never  any  good  for  anything.  In  the 
eye  of  the  law  we  are  all  sinners,  and  every  man 
is  held  to  be  guilty  until  he  has  proved  that  he 
is  innocent. 

Minora  has  seen  so  much  of  the  babies  that, 
after  vainly  trying  to  get  out  of  their  way  for 
several  days,  she  thought  it  better  to  resign  her- 
self, and  make  the  best  of  it  by  regarding  them 
as  copy,  and  using  them  to  fill  a  chapter  in  her 
book.  So  she  took  to  dogging  their  footsteps 
wherever  they  went,  attended  their  uprisings  and 
their  lyings  down,  engaged  them,  if  she  could,  in 
intelligent  conversation,  went  with  them  into  the 
garden  to  study  their  ways  when  they  were  sleigh- 
ing, drawn  by  a  big  dog,  and  generally  made  their 
lives  a  burden  to  them.  This  went  on  for  three 
days,  and  then  she  settled  down  to  write  the  re- 
sult with  the  Man  of  Wrath's  typewriter,  bor- 
rowed whenever  her  notes  for  any  chapter  have 
reached  the  state  of  ripeness  necessary  for  the 
process  she  describes  as  "throwing  into  form." 
She  writes  everything  with  a  typewriter,  even  her 
private  letters. 

"  Don't  forget  to  put  in  something  about  a 
mother's  knee,"  said  Irais ;  "  you  can't  write 
effectively  about  children  without  that." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  187 

"  Oh,  of  course  I  shall  mention  that,"  replied 
Minora. 

"  And  pink  toes,"  I  added.  "  There  are 
always  toes,  and  they  are  never  anything  but 
pink." 

"  I  have  that  somewhere,"  said  Minora,  turn- 
ing over  her  notes. 

"  But,  after  all,  babies  are  not  a  German  spe- 
ciality," said  Irais,  "and  I  don't  quite  see  why 
you  should  bring  them  into  a  book  of  German 
travels.  Elizabeth's  babies  have  each  got  the 
fashionable  number  of  arms  and  legs,  and  are 
exactly  the  same  as  English  ones." 

"  Oh,  but  they  can't  be  just  the  same,  you 
know,"  said  Minora,  looking  worried.  "  It 
must  make  a  difference  living  here  in  this  place, 
and  eating  such  odd  things,  and  never  having  a 
doctor,  and  never  being  ill.  Children  who  have 
never  had  measles  and  those  things  can't  be  quite 
the  same  as  other  children ;  it  must  all  be  in 
their  systems  and  can't  get  out  for  some  reason 
or  other.  And  a  child  brought  up  on  chicken 
and  rice-pudding  must  be  different  to  a  child 
that  eats  Spickgans  and  liver  sausages.  And  they 
are  different ;  I  can't  tell  in  what  way,  but  they 
certainly  are ;  and  I  think  if  I  steadily  describe 


1 88  ELIZABETH   AND 

them  from  the  materials  I  have  collected  the  last 
three  days,  I  may  perhaps  hit  on  the  points  of 
difference." 

"  Why  bother  about  points  of  difference  ? " 
asked  Irais.  "  I  should  write  some  little  thing, 
bringing  in  the  usual  parts  of  the  picture,  such  as 
knees  and  toes,  and  make  it  mildly  pathetic." 

"  But  it  is  by  no  means  an  easy  thing  for  me 
to  do,"  said  Minora  plaintively  ;  "  I  have  so  little 
experience  of  children." 

"  Then  why  write  it  at  all  ?  "  asked  that  sensi- 
ble person  Elizabeth. 

"  I  have  as  little  experience  as  you,"  said  Irais, 
"  because  I  have  no  children  ;  but  if  you  don't 
yearn  after  startling  originality,  nothing  is  easier 
than  to  write  bits  about  them.  I  believe  I  could 
do  a  dozen  in  an  hour." 

She  sat  down  at  the  writing-table,  took  up  an 
old  letter,  and  scribbled  for  about  five  minutes. 
"  There,"  she  said,  throwing  it  to  Minora,  "  you 
may  have  it  —  pink  toes  and  all  complete." 

Minora  put  on  her  eye-glasses  and  read 
aloud : 

"  When  my  baby  shuts  her  eyes  and  sings  her 
hymns  at  bed-time  my  stale  and  battered  soul  is 
filled  with  awe.  All  sorts  of  vague  memories 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  189 

crowd  into  my  mind  —  memories  of  my  own 
mother  and  myself —  how  many  years  ago  !  —  of 
the  sweet  helplessness  of  being  gathered  up  half 
asleep  in  her  arms,  and  undressed,  and  put  in 
my  cot,  without  being  wakened  ;  of  the  angels  I 
believed  in  ;  of  little  children  coming  straight  from 
heaven,  and  still  being  surrounded,  so  long  as 
they  were  good,  by  the  shadow  of  white  wings, 
—  all  the  dear  poetic  nonsense  learned,  just  as  my 
baby  is  learning  it,  at  her  mother's  knee.  She 
has  not  an  idea  of  the  beauty  of  the  charming 
things  she  is  told,  and  stares  wide-eyed,  with 
heavenly  eyes,  while  her  mother  talks  of  the 
heaven  she  has  so  lately  come  from,  and  is  re- 
lieved and  comforted  by  the  interrupting  bread 
and  milk.  At  two  years  old  she  does  not 
understand  angels,  and  does  understand  bread 
and  milk ;  at  five  she  has  vague  notions  about 
them,  and  prefers  bread  and  milk ;  at  ten  both 
bread  and  milk  and  angels  have  been  left  behind 
in  the  nursery,  and  she  has  already  found  out 
that  they  are  luxuries  not  necessary  to  her  every- 
day life.  In  later  years  she  may  be  disinclined 
to  accept  truths  second-hand,  insist  on  thinking 
for  herself,  be  earnest  in  her  desire  to  shake  off 
exploded  traditions,  be  untiring  in  her  efforts  to 


1 90  ELIZABETH   AND 

live  according  to  a  high  moral  standard  and  to  be 
strong,  and  pure,  and  good " 

"  Like  tea,"  explained  Irais. 

"  —  yet  will  she  never,  with  all  her  virtues, 
possess  one-thousandth  part  of  the  charm  that 
clung  about  her  when  she  sang,  with  quiet  eye- 
lids, her  first  reluctant  hymns,  kneeling  on  her 
mother's  knees.  I  love  to  come  in  at  bed-time 
and  sit  in  the  window  in  the  setting  sunshine 
watching  the  mysteries  of  her  going  to  bed.  Her 
mother  tubs  her,  for  she  is  far  too  precious  to  be 
touched  by  any  nurse,  and  then  she  is  rolled  up 
in  a  big  bath  towel,  and  only  her  little  pink  toes 
peep  out ;  and  when  she  is  powdered,  and  combed, 
and  tied  up  in  her  night-dress,  and  all  her  curls 
are  on  end,  and  her  ears  glowing,  she  is  knelt 
down  on  her  mother's  lap,  a  little  bundle  of  fra- 
grant flesh,  and  her  face  reflects  the  quiet  of  her 
mother's  face  as  she  goes  through  her  evening 
prayer  for  pity  and  for  peace." 

"  How  very  curious  !  "  said  Minora,  when  she 
had  finished.  "  That  is  exactly  what  I  was  going 
to  say." 

"  Oh,  then  I  have  saved  you  the  trouble  of 
putting  it  together ;  you  can  copy  that  if  you 
like." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  191 

"  But  have  you  a  stale  soul,  Miss  Minora  ?  "  I 
asked. 

"  Well,  do  you  know,  I  rather  think  that  is  a 
good  touch,"  she  replied ;  "  it  will  make  people 
really  think  a  man  wrote  the  book.  You  know  I 
am  going  to  take  a  man's  name." 

"  That  is  precisely  what  I  imagined,"  said  Irais. 
"  You  will  call  yourself  John  Jones,  or  George 
Potts,  or  some  such  sternly  commonplace  name, 
to  emphasise  your  uncompromising  attitude 
towards  all  feminine  weaknesses,  and  no  one  will 
be  taken  in." 

"  I  really  think,  Elizabeth,"  said  Irais  to  me 
later,  when  the  click  of  Minora's  typewriter  was 
heard  hesitating  in  the  next  room,  "  that  you  and 
I  are  writing  her  book  for  her.  She  takes  down 
everything  we  say.  Why  does  she  copy  all  that 
about  the  baby  ?  I  wonder  why  mothers'  knees 
are  supposed  to  be  touching  ?  I  never  learned 
anything  at  them,  did  you  ?  But  then  in  my  case 
they  were  only  stepmother's,  and  nobody  ever 
sings  their  praises." 

"  My  mother  was  always  at  parties,"  I  said  •, 
"and  the  nurse  made  me  say  my  prayers  in 
French." 

"  And  as  for  tubs  and  powder,"  went  on  Irais, 


192  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  when  I  was  a  baby  such  things  were  not  the 
fashion.  There  were  never  any  bathrooms,  and 
no  tubs ;  our  faces  and  hands  were  washed,  and 
there  was  a  foot-bath  in  the  room,  and  in  the  sum- 
mer we  had  a  bath  and  were  put  to  bed  afterwards 
for  fear  we  might  catch  cold.  My  stepmother 
didn't  worry  much;  she  used  to  wear  pink  dresses 
all  over  lace,  and  the  older  she  got  the  prettier  the 
dresses  got.  When  is  she  going  ?  " 

"Who?    Minora?     I  haven't  asked  her  that." 

"  Then  I  will.  It  is  really  bad  for  her  art  to  be 
neglected  like  this.  She  has  been  here  an  uncon- 
scionable time,  —  it  must  be  nearly  three  weeks." 

"  Yes,  she  came  the  same  day  you  did,"  I  said 
pleasantly. 

Irais  was  silent.  I  hope  she  was  reflecting  that 
it  is  not  worse  to  neglect  one's  art  than  one's 
husband,  and  her  husband  is  lying  all  this  time 
stretched  on  a  bed  of  sickness,  while  she  is  spend- 
ing her  days  so  agreeably  with  me.  She  has  a 
way  of  forgetting  that  she  has  a  home,  or  any 
other  business  in  the  world  than  just  to  stay  on 
chatting  with  me,  and  reading,  and  singing,  and 
laughing  at  any  one  there  is  to  laugh  at,  and 
kissing  the  babies,  and  tilting  with  the  Man  of 
Wrath.  Naturally  I  love  her  —  she  is  so  pretty 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  193 

that  anybody  with  eyes  in  his  head  must  love  her 
—  but  too  much  of  anything  is  bad,  and  next 
month  the  passages  and  offices  are  to  be  white- 
washed, and  people  who  have  ever  whitewashed 
their  houses  inside  know  what  nice  places  they 
are  to  live  in  while  it  is  being  done ;  and  there 
will  be  no  dinner  for  Irais,  and  none  of  those 
succulent  salads  full  of  caraway  seeds  that  she 
so  devotedly  loves.  I  shall  begin  to  lead  her 
thoughts  gently  back  to  her  duties  by  inquiring 
every  day  anxiously  after  her  husband's  health. 
She  is  not  very  fond  of  him,  because  he  does  not 
run  and  hold  the  door  open  for  her  every  time 
she  gets  up  to  leave  the  room ;  and  though  she 
has  asked  him  to  do  so,  and  told  him  how  much 
she  wishes  he  would,  he  still  won't.  She  stayed 
once  in  a  house  where  there  was  an  Englishman, 
and  his  nimbleness  in  regard  to  doors  and  chairs 
so  impressed  her  that  her  husband  has  had  no 
peace  since,  and  each  time  she  has  to  go  out  of 
a  room  she  is  reminded  of  her  disregarded  wishes, 
so  that  a  shut  door  is  to  her  symbolic  of  the 
failure  of  her  married  life,  and  the  very  sight  of 
one  makes  her  wonder  why  she  was  born ;  at 
least,  that  is  what  she  told  me  once,  in  a  burst 
of  confidence.  He  is  quite  a  nice,  harmless  little 


194  ELIZABETH   AND 

man,  pleasant  to  talk  to,  good-tempered,  and  full 
of  fun ;  but  he  thinks  he  is  too  old  to  begin  to 
learn  new  and  uncomfortable  ways,  and  he  has  that 
horror  of  being  made  better  by  his  wife  that  dis- 
tinguishes so  many  righteous  men,  and  is  shared 
by  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who  persists  in  holding 
his  glass  in  his  left  hand  at  meals,  because  if  he 
did  not  (and  I  don't  believe  he  particularly  likes 
doing  it)  his  relations  might  say  that  marriage 
has  improved  him,  and  thus  drive  the  iron  into 
his  soul.  This  habit  occasions  an  almost  daily 
argument  between  one  or  other  of  the  babies  and 
myself. 

"  April,  hold  your  glass  in  your  right  hand." 

"  But  papa  doesn't." 

"  When  you  are  as  old  as  papa  you  can  do  as 
you  like." 

Which  was  embellished  only  yesterday  by 
Minora  adding  impressively,  "  And  only  think 
how  strange  it  would  look  if  everybody  held  their 
glasses  so." 

April  was  greatly  struck  by  the  force  of  this 
proposition. 

January  i%th.  —  It  is  very  cold,  —  fifteen 
degrees  of  frost  Reaumur,  but  perfectly  delicious, 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  195 

still,  bright  weather,  and  one  feels  jolly  and  ener- 
getic and  amiably  disposed  towards  everybody. 
The  two  young  ladies  are  still  here,  but  the  air 
is  so  buoyant  that  even  they  don't  weigh  on 
me  any  longer,  and  besides,  they  have  both  an- 
nounced their  approaching  departure,  so  that  after 
all  I  shall  get  my  whitewashing  done  in  peace, 
and  the  house  will  have  on  its  clean  pinafore  in 
time  to  welcome  the  spring. 

Minora  has  painted  my  portrait,  and  is  going  to 
present  it  as  a  parting  gift  to  the  Man  of  Wrath ; 
and  the  fact  that  I  let  her  do  it,  and  sat  meekly 
times  innumerable,  proves  conclusively,  I  hope, 
that  I  am  not  vain.  When  Irais  first  saw  it  she 
laughed  till  she  cried,  and  at  once  commissioned 
her  to  paint  hers,  so  that  she  may  take  it  away 
with  her  and  give  it  to  her  husband  on  his  birth- 
day, which  happens  to  be  early  in  February. 
Indeed,  if  it  were  not  for  this  birthday,  I  really 
think  she  would  have  forgotten  to  go  at  all ;  but 
birthdays  are  great  and  solemn  festivals  with  us, 
lever  allowed  to  slip  by  unnoticed,  and  always 
celebrated  in  the  presence  of  a  sympathetic  crowd 
of  relations  (gathered  from  far  and  near  to  tell 
you  how  well  you  are  wearing,  and  that  nobody 
would  ever  dream,  and  that  really  it  is  wonderful), 


196  ELIZABETH   AND 

who  stand  round  a  sort  of  sacrificial  altar,  on  which 
your  years  are  offered  up  as  a  burnt-offering  to 
the  gods  in  the  shape  of  lighted  pink  and  white 
candles,  stuck  in  a  very  large,  flat,  jammy  cake. 
The  cake  with  its  candles  is  the  chief  feature,  and 
on  the  table  round  it  lie  the  gifts  each  person 
present  is  more  or  less  bound  to  give.  As  my 
birthday  falls  in  the  winter  I  get  mittens  as  well 
as  blotting-books  and  photograph-frames,  and  if 
it  were  in  the  summer  I  should  get  photograph- 
frames  and  blotting-books  and  no  mittens  ;  but 
whatever  the  present  may  be,  and  by  whomsoever 
given,  it  has  to  be  welcomed  with  the  noisiest 
gratitude,  and  loudest  exclamations  of  joy,  and 
such  words  as  entzuckend,  reizend,  herrlicb, 
wundervoll,  and  suss  repeated  over  and  over 
again,  until  the  unfortunate  Geburtstagskmd  feels 
indeed  that  another  year  has  gone,  and  that  she 
has  grown  older,  and  wiser,  and  more  tired  of  folly 
and  of  vain  repetitions.  A  flag  is  hoisted,  and  all 
the  morning  the  rites  are  celebrated,  the  cake 
eaten,  healths  drunk,  speeches  made,  and  hands 
nearly  shaken  off.  The  neighbouring  parsons 
drive  up,  and  when  nobody  is  looking  their  wives 
count  the  candles  in  the  cake ;  the  active  lady  in 
the  next  Schloss  spares  time  to  send  a  pot  of  flow- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  197 

ers,  and  to  look  up  ray  age  in  the  Gotba  Alma- 
nack ;  a  deputation  comes  from  the  farms  headed 
by  the  chief  inspector  in  white  kid  gloves  who 
invokes  Heaven's  blessings  on  the  gracious  lady's 
head  ;  and  the  babies  are  enchanted,  and  sit  in  a 
corner  trying  on  all  the  mittens.  In  the  evening 
there  is  a  dinner  for  the  relations  and  the  chief 
local  authorities,  with  more  health-drinking  and 
speechifying,  and  the  next  morning,  when  I  come 
downstairs  thankful  to  have  done  with  it,  I  am 
confronted  by  the  altar  still  in  its  place,  cake 
crumbs  and  candle-grease  and  all,  because  any 
hasty  removal  of  it  would  imply  a  most  lamenta- 
ble want  of  sentiment,  deplorable  in  anybody, 
but  scandalous  and  disgusting  in  a  tender  female. 
All  birthdays  are  observed  in  this  fashion,  and 
not  a  few  wise  persons  go  for  a  short  trip  just 
about  the  time  theirs  is  due,  and  I  think  I  shall 
imitate  them  next  year ;  only  trips  to  the  country 
or  seaside  in  December  are  not  usually  pleasant, 
and  if  I  go  to  a  town  there  are  sure  to  be  rela- 
tions in  it,  and  then  the  cake  will  spring  up  mush- 
room-like from  the  teeming  soil  of  their  affection. 
I  hope  it  has  been  made  evident  in  these  pages 
how  superior  Irais  and  myself  are  to  the  ordinary 
weaknesses  of  mankind  ;  if  any  further  proof  were 


198  ELIZABETH    AND 

needed,  it  is  furnished  by  the  fact  that  we  both, 
in  defiance  of  tradition,  scorn  this  celebration  of 
birthday  rites.  Years  ago,  when  first  I  knew  her, 
and  long  before  we  were  either  of  us  married,  I 
sent  her  a  little  brass  candlestick  on  her  birthday  ; 
and  when  mine  followed  a  few  months  later,  she 
sent  me  a  note-book.  No  notes  were  written  in 
it,  and  on  her  next  birthday  I  presented  it  to 
her ;  she  thanked  me  profusely  in  the  customary 
manner,  and  when  my  turn  came  I  received  the 
brass  candlestick.  Since  then  we  alternately  enjoy 
the  possession  of  each  of  these  articles,  and  the 
present  question  is  comfortably  settled  once  and  for 
all,  at  a  minimum  of  trouble  and  expense.  We 
never  mention  this  little  arrangement  except  at  the 
proper  time,  when  we  send  a  letter  of  fervid  thanks. 
This  radiant  weather,  when  mere  living  is 
a  joy,  and  sitting  still  over  the  fire  out  of  the 
question,  has  been  going  on  for  more  than  a 
week.  Sleighing  and  skating  have  been  our 
chief  occupation,  especially  skating,  which  is 
more  than  usually  fascinating  here,  because  the 
place  is  intersected  by  small  canals  communicat- 
ing with  a  lake  and  the  river  belonging  to  the 
lake,  and  as  everything  is  frozen  black  and  hard, 
we  can  skate  for  miles  straight  ahead  without 


HER    GERMAN    GARDEN  199 

being  obliged  to  turn  round  and  come  back 
again,  —  at  all  times  an  annoying,  and  even 
mortifying,  proceeding.  Irais  skates  beautifully  : 
modesty  is  the  only  obstacle  to  my  saying  the 
same  of  myself;  but  I  may  remark  that  all  Ger- 
mans skate  well,  for  the  simple  reason  that  every 
year  of  their  lives,  for  three  or  four  months, 
they  may  do  it  as  much  as  they  like.  Minora 
was  astonished  and  disconcerted  by  finding  her- 
self left  behind,  and  arriving  at  the  place  where 
tea  meets  us  half  an  hour  after  we  had  finished. 
In  some  places  the  banks  of  the  canals  are  so 
high  that  only  our  heads  appear  level  with  the 
fields,  and  it  is,  as  Minora  noted  in  her  book, 
a  curious  sight  to  see  three  female  heads  skim- 
ming along  apparently  by  themselves,  and  enjoy- 
ing it  tremendously.  When  the  banks  are  low, 
we  appear  to  be  gliding  deliciously  over  the 
roughest  ploughed  fields,  with  or  without  legs 
according  to  circumstances.  Before  we  start,  I 
fix  on  the  place  where  tea  and  a  sleigh  are  to 
meet  us,  and  we  drive  home  again ;  because 
skating  against  the  wind  is  as  detestable  as  skat- 
ing with  it  is  delightful,  and  an  unkind  Nature 
arranges  its  blowing  without  the  smallest  regard 
for  our  convenience. 


200  ELIZABETH    AND 

Yesterday,  by  wav  of  a  change,  we  went  for  a 
picnic  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic,  ice-bound  at 
this  season,  and  utterly  desolate  at  our  nearest 
point.  I  have  a  weakness  tor  p;cnicb,  especially  in 
winter,  when  the  mosquitoes  cease  from  troubling 
and  the  ant-hills  are  at  rest;  and  of  all  my  many 
favourite  picnic  spots  this  one  on  the  Baltic  is  the 
loveliest  and  best.  As  it  is  a  three-hours'  drive, 
the  Man  of  Wrath  is  loud  in  his  lamentations 
when  the  special  sort  of  weather  comes  which 
means,  as  experience  has  taught  him,  this  particu- 
lar excursion.  There  must  be  deep  snow,  hard 
frost,  no  wind,  and  a  cloudless  sky  ;  and  when,  on 
waking  up,  I  see  these  conditions  fulfilled,  then  it 
would  need  some  very  potent  reason  to  keep  me 
from  having  out  a  sleigh  and  going  off.  It  is,  I 
admit,  a  hard  day  for  the  horses ;  but  why  have 
horses  if  they  are  not  to  take  you  where  you  want 
to  go  to,  and  at  the  time  you  want  to  go  ?  And 
why  should  not  horses  have  hard  days  as  well  as 
everybody  else  ?  The  Man  of  Wrath  loathes  pic- 
nics, and  has  no  eye  for  nature  and  frozen  seas,  and 
is  simply  bored  by  a  long  drive  through  a  forest 
that  does  not  belong  to  him  ;  a  single  turnip  on  his 
own  place  is  more  admirable  in  his  eyes  than  the 
tallest,  pinkest,  straightest  pine  that  ever  reared 


HER   GERiMAN    GARDEN  201 

its  snow-crowned  head  against  the  setting  sunlight. 
Now  observe  the  superiority  of  woman,  who  sees 
that  both  are  good,  and  after  having  gazed  at  the 
pine  and  been  made  happy  by  its  beauty,  goes 
home  and  placidly  eats  the  turnip.  He  went  once 
and  only  once  to  this  particular  place,  and  made 
us  feel  so  small  by  his  blase  behaviour  that  I  never 
invite  him  now.  It  is  a  beautiful  spot,  endless 
forest  stretching  along  the  shore  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach  ;  and  after  driving  through  it  for  miles 
you  come  suddenly,  at  the  end  of  an  avenue  of 
arching  trees,  upon  the  glistening,  oily  sea,  with 
the  orange-coloured  sails  of  distant  fishing-smacks 
shining  in  the  sunlight.  Whenever  I  have  been 
there  it  has  been  windless  weather,  and  the  silence 
so  profound  that  I  could  hear  my  pulses  beating. 
The  humming  of  insects  and  the  sudden  scream 
of  a  jay  are  the  only  sounds  in  summer,  and  in 
winter  the  stillness  is  the  stillness  of  death. 

Every  paradise  has  its  serpent,  however,  and 
this  one  is  so  infested  by  mosquitoes  during  the 
season  when  picnics  seem  most  natural,  that  those 
of  my  visitors  who  have  been  taken  there  for  a 
treat  have  invariably  lost  their  tempers,  and  made 
the  quiet  shores  ring  with  their  wailing  and 
lamentations.  These  despicable  but  irritating  in- 


202  ELIZABETH   AND 

sects  don't  seem  to  have  anything  to  do  but  to 
sit  in  multitudes  on  the  sand,  waiting  for  any  prey 
Providence  may  send  them ;  and  as  soon  as  the 
carriage  appears  they  rise  up  in  a  cloud,  and  rush 
to  meet  us,  almost  dragging  us  out  bodily,  and 
never  leave  us  until  we  drive  away  again.  The 
sudden  view  of  the  sea  from  the  mossy,  pine-cov- 
ered height  directly  above  it  where  we  picnic ;  the 
wonderful  stretch  of  lonely  shore  with  the  forest 
to  the  water's  edge ;  the  coloured  sails  in  the  blue 
distance  ;  the  freshness,  the  brightness,  the  vast- 
ness  —  all  is  lost  upon  the  picnickers,  and  made 
worse  than  indifferent  to  them,  by  the  perpetual 
necessity  they  are  under  of  fighting  these  horrid 
creatures.  It  is  nice  being  the  only  person  who 
ever  goes  there  or  shows  it  to  anybody,  but  if 
more  people  went,  perhaps  the  mosquitoes  would 
be  less  lean,  and  hungry,  and  pleased  to  see  us. 
It  has,  however,  the  advantage  of  being  a  suitable 
place  to  which  to  take  refractory  visitors  when 
they  have  stayed  too  long,  or  left  my  books  out 
in  the  garden  all  night,  or  otherwise  made  their 
presence  a  burden  too  grievous  to  be  borne ;  then 
one  fine  hot  morning  when  they  are  all  looking 
limp,  I  suddenly  propose  a  picnic  on  the  Baltic. 
I  have  never  known  this  proposal  fail  to  be 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  203 

greeted  with  exclamations  of  surprise  and  de- 
light. 

"  The  Baltic !  You  never  told  us  you  were 
within  driving  distance  ?  How  heavenly  to  get  a 
breath  of  sea  air  on  a  day  like  this !  The  very 
thought  puts  new  life  into  one  !  And  how  delight- 
ful to  see  the  Baltic !  Oh, please  take  us  ! "  And 
then  I  take  them. 

But  on  a  brilliant  winter's  day  my  conscience 
is  as  clear  as  the  frosty  air  itself,  and  yesterday 
morning  we  started  off  in  the  gayest  of  spirits, 
even  Minora  being  disposed  to  laugh  immoder- 
ately on  the  least  provocation.  Only  our  eyes 
were  allowed  to  peep  out  from  the  fur  and  wool- 
len wrappings  necessary  to  our  heads  if  we  would 
come  back  with  our  ears  and  noses  in  the  same 
places  they  were  in  when  we  started,  and  for  the 
first  two  miles  the  mirth  created  by  each  other's 
strange  appearance  was  uproarious,  —  a  fact  I 
mention  merely  to  show  what  an  effect  dry, 
bright,  intense  cold  produces  on  healthy  bodies, 
and  how  much  better  it  is  to  go  out  in  it  and 
enjoy  it  than  to  stay  indoors  and  sulk.  As  we 
passed  through  the  neighbouring  village  with 
cracking  of  whip  and  jingling  of  bells,  heads 
popped  up  at  the  windows  to  stare,  and  the  omy 


204  ELIZABETH   AND 

living  thing  in  the  silent,  sunny  street  was  a  mel- 
ancholy fowl  with  ruffled  feathers,  which  looked 
at  us  reproachfully,  as  we  dashed  with  so  much 
energy  over  the  crackling  snow. 

"  Oh,  foolish  bird ! "  Irais  called  out  as  we 
passed ;  "  you'll  be  indeed  a  cold  fowl  if  you 
stand  there  motionless,  and  every  one  prefers 
them  hot  in  weather  like  this  !  " 

And  then  we  all  laughed  exceedingly,  as  though 
the  most  splendid  joke  had  been  made,  and  be- 
fore we  had  done  we  were  out  of  the  village  and 
in  the  open  country  beyond,  and  could  see  my 
house  and  garden  far  away  behind,  glittering  in 
the  sunshine;  and  in  front  of  us  lay  the  forest, 
with  its  vistas  of  pines  stretching  away  into  infin- 
ity, and  a  drive  through  it  of  fourteen  miles 
before  we  reached  the  sea.  It  was  a  hoar-frost 
day,  and  the  forest  was  an  enchanted  forest  lead- 
ing into  fairyland,  and  though  Irais  and  I  have 
been  there  often  before,  and  always  thought  it 
beautiful,  yet  yesterday  we  stood  under  the  final 
arch  of  frosted  trees,  struck  silent  by  the  sheer 
loveliness  of  the  place.  For  a  long  way  out  the 
sea  was  frozen,  and  then  there  was  a  deep  blue 
line,  and  a  cluster  of  motionless  orange  sails  ;  at 
our  feet  a  narrow  strip  of  pale  yellow  sand  ;  right 


HER   GERMAN    GARDEN  205 

and  left  the  line  of  sparkling  forest ;  and  we  our- 
selves standing  in  a  world  of  white  and  diamond 
traceries.  The  stillness  of  an  eternal  Sunday  lay 
on  the  place  like  a  benediction. 

Minora  broke  the  silence  by  remarking  that 
Dresden  was  pretty,  but  she  thought  this  beat  it 
almost. 

"  I  don't  quite  see,"  said  Irais  in  a  hushed 
voice,  as  though  she  were  in  a  holy  place,  "how 
the  two  can  be  compared." 

"  Yes,  Dresden  is  more  convenient,  of  course," 
replied  Minora ;  after  which  we  turned  away  and 
thought  we  would  keep  her  quiet  by  feeding  her, 
so  we  went  back  to  the  sleigh  and  had  the  horses 
taken  out  and  their  cloths  put  on,  and  they  were 
walked  up  and  down  a  distant  glade  while  we  sat 
in  the  sleigh  and  picnicked.  It  is  a  hard  day  for 
the  horses,  —  nearly  thirty  miles  there  and  back 
and  no  stable  in  the  middle ;  but  they  are  so  fat 
and  spoiled  that  it  cannot  do  them  much  harm 
sometimes  to  taste  the  bitterness  of  life.  I 
warmed  soup  in  a  little  apparatus  I  have  for 
such  occasions,  which  helped  to  take  the  chilli- 
ness off  the  sandwiches,  —  this  is  the  only 
unpleasant  part  of  a  winter  picnic,  the  clammy 
quality  of  the  provisions  just  when  you  most  long 


206  ELIZABETH   AND 

for  something  very  hot.  Minora  let  her  nose 
very  carefully  out  of  its  wrappings,  took  a  mouth- 
ful, and  covered  it  up  quickly  again.  She  was 
nervous  lest  it  should  be  frost-nipped,  and  truth 
compels  me  to  add  that  her  nose  is  not  a  bad 
nose,  and  might  even  be  pretty  on  anybody  else ; 
but  she  does  not  know  how  to  carry  it,  and  there 
is  an  art  in  the  angle  at  which  one's  nose  is  held 
just  as  in  everything  else,  and  really  noses  were 
intended  for  something  besides  mere  blowing. 

It  is  the  most  difficult  thing  in  the  world  to  eat 
sandwiches  with  immense  fur  and  woollen  gloves 
on,  and  I  think  we  ate  almost  as  much  fur  as  any- 
thing, and  choked  exceedingly  during  the  process. 
Minora  was  angry  at  this,  and  at  last  pulled  off 
her  glove,  but  quickly  put  it  on  again. 

"  How  very  unpleasant,"  she  remarked  after 
swallowing  a  large  piece  of  fur. 

"  It  will  wrap  round  your  pipes,  and  keep  them 
warm,"  said  Irais. 

"  Pipes  !  "  echoed  Minora,  greatly  disgusted  by 
such  vulgarity. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  can't  help  you,"  I  said,  as  she 
continued  to  choke  and  splutter ;  "  we  are  all 
in  the  same  case,  and  I  don't  know  how  to  alter 
it." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  207 

"  There  are  such  things  as  forks,  I  suppose," 
snapped  Minora. 

"  That's  true,"  said  I,  crushed  by  the  obvious- 
ness of  the  remedy ;  but  of  what  use  are  forks  if 
they  are  fifteen  miles  off?  So  Minora  had  to 
continue  to  eat  her  gloves. 

By  the  time  we  had  finished,  the  sun  was 
already  low  behind  the  trees  and  the  clouds  begin- 
ning to  flush  a  faint  pink.  The  old  coachman 
was  given  sandwiches  and  soup,  and  while  he  led 
the  horses  up  and  down  with  one  hand  and  held 
his  lunch  in  the  other,  we  packed  up  —  or,  to  be 
correct,  I  packed,  and  the  others  looked  on  and 
gave  me  valuable  advice. 

This  coachman,  Peter  by  name,  is  seventy  years 
old,  and  was  born  on  the  place,  and  has  driven  its 
occupants  for  fifty  years,  and  I  am  nearly  as  fond 
of  him  as  I  am  of  the  sun-dial ;  indeed,  I  don't 
know  what  I  should  do  without  him,  so  entirely 
does  he  appear  to  understand  and  approve  of  my 
tastes  and  wishes.  No  drive  is  too  long  or  difficult 
for  the  horses  if  I  want  to  take  it,  no  place  im- 
possible to  reach  if  I  want  to  go  to  it,  no  weather 
or  roads  too  bad  to  prevent  my  going  out  if  I 
wish  to :  to  all  my  suggestions  he  responds  with 
the  readiest  cheerfulness,  and  smoothes  away  aL 


208  ELIZABETH   AND 

objections  raised  by  the  Man  of  Wrath,  who 
rewards  his  alacrity  in  doing  my  pleasure  by 
speaking  of  him  as  an  alter  Esel.  In  the  sum- 
mer, on  fine  evenings,  I  love  to  drive  late  and 
alone  in  the  scented  forests,  and  when  I  have 
reached  a  dark  part  stop,  and  sit  quite  still,  listening 
to  the  nightingales  repeating  their  little  tune  over 
and  over  again  after  interludes  of  gurgling,  or  if 
there  are  no  nightingales,  listening  to  the  marvel- 
lous silence,  and  letting  its  blessedness  descend  into 
my  very  soul.  The  nightingales  in  the  forests 
about  here  all  sing  the  same  tune,  and  in  the  same 
key  of  (E  flat). 

I  don't  know  whether  all  nightingales  do  this, 
or  if  it  is  peculiar  to  this  particular  spot.  When 
they  have  sung  it  once,  they  clear  their  throats 
a  little,  and  hesitate,  and  then  do  it  again,  and  it 
is  the  prettiest  little  song  in  the  world.  How 
could  I  indulge  my  passion  for  these  drives  with 
their  pauses  without  Peter  ?  He  is  so  used  to 
them  that  he  stops  now  at  the  right  moment  with- 
out having  to  be  told,  and  he  is  ready  to  drive  me 
all  night  if  I  wish  it,  with  no  sign  of  anything  but 
cheerful  willingness  on  his  nice  old  face.  The 
Man  of  Wrath  deplores  these  eccentric  tastes,  as 
he  calls  them,  of  mine ;  but  has  given  up  trying 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  209 

to  prevent  my  indulging  them  because,  while  he 
is  deploring  in  one  part  of  the  house,  I  have 
slipped  out  at  a  door  in  the  other,  and  am  gone 
before  he  can  catch  me,  and  have  reached  and  am 
lost  in  the  shadows  of  the  forest  by  the  time  he 
has  discovered  that  I  am  nowhere  to  be  found. 

The  brightness  of  Peter's  perfections  are  sullied 
however  by  one  spot,  and  that  is,  that  as  age 
creeps  upon  him,  he  not  only  cannot  hold  the 
horses  in  if  they  don't  want  to  be  held  in,  but  he 
goes  to  sleep  sometimes  on  his  box  if  I  have  him 
out  too  soon  after  lunch,  and  has  upset  me  twice 
within  the  last  year  —  once  last  winter  out  of  a 
sleigh,  and  once  this  summer,  when  the  horses 
shied  at  a  bicycle,  and  bolted  into  the  ditch  on  one 
side  of  the  chaussee  (German  for  high  road),  and 
the  bicycle  was  so  terrified  at  the  horses  shying 
that  it  shied  too  into  the  ditch  on  the  other  side, 
and  the  carriage  was  smashed,  and  the  bicycle 
was  smashed,  and  we  were  all  very  unhappy,  ex- 
cept Peter,  who  never  lost  his  pleasant  smile,  and 
looked  so  placid  that  my  tongue  clave  to  the  roof 
of  my  mouth  when  I  tried  to  make  it  scold  him. 

"  But  I  should  think  he  ought  to  have  been 
thoroughly  scolded  on  an  occasion  like  that,"  said 
Minora,  to  whom  I  had  been  telling  this  story  as 


210  ELIZABETH    AND 

we  wandered  on  the  yellow  sands  while  the  horses 
were  being  put  in  the  sleigh ;  and  she  glanced 
nervously  up  at  Peter,  whose  mild  head  was  visi- 
ble between  the  bushes  above  us.  "  Shall  we  get 
home  before  dark  ?  "  she  asked. 

The  sun  had  altogether  disappeared  behind  the 
pines  and  only  the  very  highest  of  the  little  clouds 
were  still  pink ;  out  at  sea  the  mists  were  creeping 
up,  and  the  sails  of  the  fishing-smacks  had  turned 
a  dull  brown ;  a  flight  of  wild  geese  passed  across 
the  disc  of  the  moon  with  loud  cacklings. 

"  Before  dark  ?  "  echoed  Irais,  "  I  should  think 
not.  It  is  dark  now  nearly  in  the  forest,  and  we 
shall  have  the  loveliest  moonlight  drive  back." 

"  But  it  is  surely  very  dangerous  to  let  a 
man  who  goes  to  sleep  drive  you,"  said  Minora 
apprehensively. 

"  But  he's  such  an  old  dear,"  I  said. 

"Yes,  yes,  no  doubt,"  she  replied  testily; 
"  but  there  are  wakeful  old  dears  to  be  had,  and 
on  a  box  they  are  preferable." 

Irais  laughed.  "  You  are  growing  quite  amus- 
ing, Miss  Minora,"  she  said. 

"  He  isn't  on  a  box  to-day,"  said  I ;  "and  I 
never  knew  him  to  go  to  sleep  standing  up 
behind  us  on  a  sleigh." 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  211 

But  Minora  was  not  to  be  appeased,  and 
muttered  something  about  seeing  no  fun  in  fool- 
hardiness,  which  shows  how  alarmed  she  was,  for 
it  was  rude. 

Peter,  however,  behaved  beautifully  on  the  way 
home,  and  Irais  and  I  at  least  were  as  happy  as 
possible  driving  back,  with  all  the  glories  of  the 
western  sky  flashing  at  us  every  now  and  then  at 
the  end  of  a  long  avenue  as  we  swiftly  passed, 
and  later  on,  when  they  had  faded,  myriads  of 
stars  in  the  narrow  black  strip  of  sky  over  our 
heads.  It  was  bitterly  cold,  and  Minora  was 
silent,  and  not  in  the  least  inclined  to  laugh  with 
us  as  she  had  been  six  hours  before. 

"  Have  you  enjoyed  yourself,  Miss  Minora  i  ''' 
inquired  Irais,  as  we  got  out  of  the  forest  on  to 
the  cbaussee,  and  the  lights  of  the  village  before 
ours  twinkled  in  the  distance. 

"  How  many  degrees  do  you  suppose  there 
are  now  ?  "  was  Minora's  reply  to  this  question. 

"  Degrees  ?  —  Of  frost  ?  Oh,  dear  me,  are  you 
cold  ?  "  cried  Irais  solicitously. 

"  Well,  it  isn't  exactly  warm,  is  it?"  said  Minora 
sulkily  ;  and  Irais  pinched  me.  "  Weil,  but  think 
how  much  colder  you  would  have  been  without  all 
that  fur  you  ate  for  lunch  inside  you,"  she  said. 


212  ELIZABETH   AND 

"  And  what  a  nice  chapter  you  will  be  able  to 
write  about  the  Baltic,"  said  I.  "  Why,  it  is 
practically  certain  that  you  are  the  first  English 
person  who  has  ever  been  to  just  this  part  of  it." 

"  Isn't  there  some  English  poem,"  said  Irais, 
"about  being  the  first  who  ever  burst " 

" '  Into  that  silent  sea,' '  finished  Minora 
hastily.  "You  can't  quote  that  without  its  con- 
text, you  know." 

"  But  I  wasn't  going  to,"  said  Irais  meekly ; 
"  I  only  paused  to  breathe.  I  must  breathe,  or 
perhaps  I  might  die." 

The  lights  from  my  energetic  friend's  Scbloss 
shone  brightly  down  upon  us  as  we  passed  round 
the  base  of  the  hill  on  which  it  stands ;  she  is 
very  proud  of  this  hill,  as  well  she  may  be,  seeing 
that  it  is  the  only  one  in  the  whole  district. 

"  Do  you  never  go  there  ? "  asked  Minora, 
jerking  her  head  in  the  direction  of  the  housec 

"  Sometimes.  She  is  a  very  busy  woman,  and 
I  should  feel  I  was  in  the  way  if  I  went  often." 

"  It  would  be  interesting  to  see  another  North 
German  interior,"  said  Minora ;  "  and  I  should 
be  obliged  if  you  would  take  me." 

"  But  I  can't  fall  upon  her  suddenly  with  a 
strange  girl,"  I  protested ;  "  and  we  are  not  at 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  213 

all  on  such  intimate  terms  as  to  justify  my  taking 
all  my  visitors  to  see  her.'" 

"  What  do  you  want  to  see  another  interior 
for  ? "  asked  Irais.  "  I  can  tell  you  what  it  is 
like ;  and  if  you  went  nobody  would  speak  to 
you,  and  if  you  were  to  ask  questions,  and  began 
to  take  notes,  the  good  lady  would  stare  at  you 
in  the  frankest  amazement,  and  think  Elizabeth 
had  brought  a  young  lunatic  out  for  an  airing. 
Everybody  is  not  as  patient  as  Elizabeth,"  added 
Irais,  anxious  to  pay  off  old  scores. 

"  I  would  do  a  great  deal  for  you,  Miss 
Minora,"  I  said,  "but  I  can't  do  that." 

"  If  we  went,"  said  Irais,  "  Elizabeth  and  I 
would  be  placed  with  great  ceremony  on  a  sofa 
behind  a  large,  polished  oval  table  with  a  crochet- 
mat  in  the  centre  —  it  has  got  a  crochet-mat  in 
the  centre,  hasn't  it  ?  "  I  nodded.  "  And  you 
would  sit  on  one  of  the  four  little  podgy,  buttony, 
tasselly  red  chairs  that  are  ranged  on  the  other 
side  of  the  table  facing  the  sofa.  They  are  red, 
Elizabeth?"  Again  I  nodded.  "The  floor  is 
painted  yellow,  and  there  is  no  carpet  except  a 
rug  in  front  of  the  sofa.  The  paper  is  dark 
chocolate  colour,  almost  black ;  that  is  in  order 
that  after  years  of  use  the  dirt  may  not  show,  and 


214  ELIZABETH    AND 

the  room  need  not  be  done  up.  Dirt  is  like 
wickedness,  you  see,  Miss  Minora  —  its  being 
there  never  matters ;  it  is  only  when  it  shows  so 
much  as  to  be  apparent  to  everybody  that  we  are 
ashamed  of  it.  At  intervals  round  the  high  walls 
are  chairs,  and  cabinets  with  lamps  on  them,  and 
in  one  corner  is  a  great  white  cold  stove  —  or  is  it 
majolica  ?  "  she  asked,  turning  to  me. 

"  No,  it  is  white." 

"  There  are  a  great  many  lovely  big  windows, 
all  ready  to  let  in  the  air  and  the  sun,  but  they  are 
as  carefully  covered  with  brown  lace  curtains  under 
heavy  stuff  ones  as  though  a  whole  row  of  houses 
were  just  opposite,  with  peering  eyes  at  every 
window  trying  to  look  in,  instead  of  there  only 
being  fields,  and  trees,  and  birds.  No  fire,  no 
sunlight,  no  books,  no  flowers  ;  but  a  consoling 
smell  of  red  cabbage  coming  up  under  the  door, 
mixed,  in  due  season,  with  soapsuds." 

"  When  did  you  go  there  ?  "  asked  Minora. 

"  Ah,  when  did  I  go  there  indeed  ?  When  did 
I  not  go  there  ?  I  have  been  calling  there  all  my 
life." 

Minora's  eyes  rolled  doubtfully  first  at  me  then 
at  Irais  from  the  depths  of  her  head-wrappings ; 
they  are  large  eyes  with  long  dark  eyelashes,  and 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  215 

far  be  it  from  me  to  deny  that  each  eye  taken  by 
itself  is  fine,  but  they  are  put  in  all  wrong. 

"  The  only  thing  you  would  learn  there,"  went 
on  Irais,  "  would  be  the  significance  of  sofa  corners 
in  Germany.  If  we  three  went  there  together,  I 
should  be  ushered  into  the  right-hand  corner  of 
the  sofa,  because  it  is  the  place  of  honour,  and  I 
am  the  greatest  stranger ;  Elizabeth  would  be  in- 
vited to  seat  herself  in  the  left-hand  corner,  as 
next  in  importance ;  the  hostess  would  sit  near  us 
in  an  arm-chair ;  and  you,  as  a  person  of  no  im- 
portance whatever,  would  either  be  left  to  sit  where 
you  could,  or  would  be  put  on  a  chair  facing  us, 
and  with  the  entire  breadth  of  the  table  between  us 
to  mark  the  immense  social  gulf  that  separates  the 
married  woman  from  the  mere  virgin.  These  sofa 
corners  make  the  drawing  of  nice  distinctions 
possible  in  a  way  that  nothing  else  could.  The 
world  might  come  to  an  end,  and  create  less  sen- 
sation in  doing  it,  than  you  would,  Miss  Minora, 
if  by  any  chance  you  got  into  the  right-hand 
corner  of  one.  That  you  are  put  on  a  chair  on  the 
other  side  of  the  table  places  you  at  once  in  the 
scale  of  precedence,  and  exactly  defines  your  social 
position,  or  rather  your  complete  want  of  a  social 
position."  And  Irais  tilted  her  nose  ever  so 


216  ELIZABETH    AND 

little  heavenwards.  "  Note  it,"  she  added,  "  as 
the  heading  of  your  next  chapter." 

"  Note  what  ?  "  asked  Minora  impatiently. 

"Why,  c  The  Subtle  Significance  of  Sofas',  of 
course,"  replied  Irais.  "  If,"  she  continued,  as 
Minora  made  no  reply  appreciative  of  this  sug- 
gestion, "  you  were  to  call  unexpectedly,  the  bad 
luck  which  pursues  the  innocent  would  most 
likely  make  you  hit  on  a  washing-day,  and  the 
distracted  mistress  of  the  house  would  keep  you 
waiting  in  the  cold  room  so  long  while  she  changed 
her  dress,  that  you  would  begin  to  fear  you  were  to 
be  left  to  perish  from  want  and  hunger ;  and  when 
she  did  appear,  would  show  by  the  bitterness  of 
her  welcoming  smile  the  rage  that  was  boiling  in 
her  heart." 

"  But  what  has  the  mistress  of  the  house  to  do 
with  washing  ?  " 

"What  has  she  to  do  with  washing?  Oh, 
you  sweet  innocent — pardon  my  familiarity,  but 
such  ignorance  of  country-life  customs  is  very 
touching  in  one  who  is  writing  a  book  about 
them. " 

"  Oh,  I  have  no  doubt  I  am  very  ignorant," 
said  Minora  loftily. 

"  Seasons   of  washing,"   explained   Irais,  "  are 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  217 

seasons  set  apart  by  the  Hausfrau  to  be  kept  holy. 
They  only  occur  every  two  or  three  months,  and 
while  they  are  going  on  the  whole  house  is  in  an 
uproar,  every  other  consideration  sacrificed,  hus- 
band and  children  sunk  into  insignificance,  and  no 
one  approaching,  or  interfering  with  the  mistress 
of  the  house  during  these  days  of  purification, 
but  at  their  peril." 

"  You  don't  really  mean,"  said  Minora,  "  that 
you  only  wash  your  clothes  four  times  a  year  ?  " 

"Yes,  I  do  mean  it,"  replied  Irais. 

"  Well,  I  think  that  is  very  disgusting,"  said 
Minora  emphatically. 

Irais  raised  those  pretty,  delicate  eyebrows  of 
hers.  "  Then  you  must  take  care  and  not  marry 
a  German,"  she  said. 

"  But  what  is  the  object  of  it  ? "  went  on 
Minora. 

"  Why,  to  clean  the  linen,  I  suppose." 

"Yes,  yes,  but  why  only  at  such  long  in- 
tervals ?  " 

"  It  is  an  outward  and  visible  sign  of  vast  pos- 
sessions in  the  shape  of  linen.  If  you  were  to 
want  to  have  your  clothes  washed  every  week, 
as  you  do  in  England,  you  would  be  put  down 
as  a  person  who  only  has  just  enough  to  last 


218  ELIZABETH   AND 

that  length  of  time,  and  would  be  an  object  of 
general  contempt." 

"  But  I  should  be  a  clean  object,"  cried  Minora, 
"  and  my  house  would  not  be  full  of  accumulated 
dirt." 

We  said  nothing  —  there  was  nothing  to  be 
said. 

"  It  must  be  a  happy  land,  that  England  of 
yours,"  Irais  remarked  after  a  while  with  a  sigh  — 
a  beatific  vision  no  doubt  presenting  itself  to  her 
mind  of  a  land  full  of  washerwomen  and  agile 
gentlemen  darting  at  door-handles. 

"It  is  a  clean  land,  at  any  rate,"  replied 
Minora. 

"  /  don't  want  to  go  and  live  in  it,"  I  said  — 
for  we  were  driving  up  to  the  house,  and  a 
memory  of  fogs  and  umbrellas  came  into  my 
mind  as  I  looked  up  fondly  at  its  dear  old  west 
front,  and  I  felt  that  what  I  want  is  to  live  and 
die  just  here,  and  that  there  never  was  such  a 
happy  woman  as  Elizabeth. 


April  i8/£.  —  I  have  been  so  busy  ever  since 
Irais  and  Minora  left  that  I  can  hardly  believe 
the  spring  is  here,  and  the  garden  hurrying  on 
its  green  and  flowered  petticoat  —  only  its  petti- 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  219 

coat  as  yet,  for  though  the  underwood  is  a  fairy- 
land of  tender  little  leaves,  the  trees  above  are 
still  quite  bare. 

February  was  gone  before  I  well  knew  that  it 
had  come,  so  deeply  was  I  engaged  in  making 
hot-beds,  and  having  them  sown  with  petunias, 
verbenas,  and  nicotina  affinis ;  while  no  less  than 
thirty  are  dedicated  solely  to  vegetables,  it  having 
been  borne  in  upon  me  lately  that  vegetables 
must  be  interesting  things  to  grow,  besides  pos- 
sessing solid  virtues  not  given  to  flowers,  and 
that  I  might  as  well  take  the  orchard  and  kitchen 
garden  under  my  wing.  So  I  have  rushed  in 
with  all  the  zeal  of  utter  inexperience,  and  my 
February  evenings  were  spent  poring  over  gar- 
dening books,  and  my  days  in  applying  the 
freshly  absorbed  wisdom.  Who  says  that  Feb- 
ruary is  a  dull,  sad,  slow  month  in  the  country  ? 
It  was  of  the  cheerfullest,  swiftest  description 
here,  and  its  mild  days  enabled  me  to  get  on 
beautifully  with  the  digging  and  manuring,  and 
filled  my  rooms  with  snowdrops.  The  longer 
I  live  the  greater  is  my  respect  and  affection  for 
manure  in  all  its  forms,  and  already,  though  the 
year  is  so  young,  a  considerable  portion  of  its 
pin-money  has  been  spent  on  artificial  manure. 


220  ELIZABETH    AND 

The  Man  of  Wrath  says  he  never  met  a  young 
woman  who  spent  her  money  that  way  before ; 
I  remarked  that  it  must  be  nice  to  have  an  orig- 
inal wife ;  and  he  retorted  that  the  word  original 
hardly  described  me,  and  that  the  word  eccentric 
was  the  one  required.  Very  well,  I  suppose  I 
am  eccentric,  since  even  my  husband  says  so ; 
but  if  my  eccentricities  are  of  such  a  practical 
nature  as  to  result  later  in  the  biggest  cauli- 
flowers and  tenderest  lettuce  in  Prussia,  why 
then  he  ought  to  be  the  first  to  rise  up  and  call 
me  blessed. 

I  sent  to  England  for  vegetable-marrow  seeds, 
as  they  are  not  grown  here,  and  people  try  and 
make  boiled  cucumbers  take  their  place ;  but 
boiled  cucumbers  are  nasty  things,  and  I  don't 
see  why  marrows  should  not  do  here  perfectly 
well.  These,  and  primrose-roots,  are  the  English 
contributions  to  my  garden.  I  brought  over  the 
roots  in  a  tin  box  last  time  I  came  from  England, 
and  am  anxious  to  see  whether  they  will  consent 
to  live  here.  Certain  it  is  that  they  don't  exist  in 
the  Fatherland,  so  I  can  only  conclude  the  winter 
kills  them,  for  surely,  if  such  lovely  things  would 
grow,  they  never  would  have  been  overlooked. 
Irais  is  deeply  interested  in  the  experiment ;  she 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  221 

reads  so  many  English  books,  and  has  heard  so 
much  about  primroses,  and  they  have  got  so  mixed 
up  in  her  mind  with  leagues,  and  dames,  and 
Disraelis,  that  she  longs  to  see  this  mysterious 
political  flower,  and  has  made  me  promise  to  tele- 
graph when  it  appears,  and  she  will  come  over. 
But  they  are  not  going  to  do  anything  this  year, 
and  I  only  hope  those  cold  days  did  not  send 
them  off  to  the  Paradise  of  flowers.  I  am  afraid 
their  first  impression  of  Germany  was  a  chilly 
one. 

Irais  writes  about  once  a  week,  and  inquires 
after  the  garden  and  the  babies,  and  announces  her 
intention  of  coming  back  as  soon  as  the  numerous 
relations  staying  with  her  have  left, —  "which  they 
won't  do,"  she  wrote  the  other  day,  "  until  the  first 
frosts  nip  them  off,  when  they  will  disappear  like 
belated  dahlias  —  double  ones  of  course,  for  single 
dahlias  are  too  charming  to  be  compared  to  rela- 
tions. I  have  every  sort  of  cousin  and  uncle  and 
aunt  here,  and  here  they  have  been  ever  since  my 
husband's  birthday  —  not  the  same  ones  exactly, 
but  I  get  so  confused  that  I  never  know  where  one 
ends  and  the  other  begins.  My  husband  goes  off 
after  breakfast  to  look  at  his  crops,  he  says,  and  I 
am  left  at  their  mercy.  I  wish  I  had  crops  to 


222  ELIZABETH   AND 

go  and  look  at  —  I  should  be  grateful  even  for 
one,  and  would  look  at  it  from  morning  till  night, 
and  quite  stare  it  out  of  countenance,  sooner  than 
stay  at  home  and  have  the  truth  told  me  by  enig- 
matic aunts.  Do  you  know  my  Aunt  Bertha  ? 
she,  in  particular,  spends  her  time  propounding 
obscure  questions  for  my  solution.  I  get  so  tired 
and  worried  trying  to  guess  the  answers,  which  are 
always  truths  supposed  to  be  good  for  me  to  hear. 
'  Why  do  you  wear  your  hair  on  your  forehead  ? ' 
she  asks,  —  and  that  sets  me  off  wondering  why  I 
do  wear  it  on  my  forehead,  and  what  she  wants  to 
know  for,  or  whether  she  does  know  and  only 
wants  to  know  if  I  will  answer  truthfully.  '  I  am 
sure  I  don't  know,  aunt,'  I  say  meekly,  after 
puzzling  over  it  for  ever  so  long  ;  £  perhaps  my 
maid  knows.  Shall  I  ring  and  ask  her  ? '  And 
then  she  informs  me  that  I  wear  it  so  to  hide  an 
ugly  line  she  says  I  have  down  the  middle  of  my 
forehead,  and  that  betokens  a  listless  and  discon- 
tented disposition.  Well,  if  she  knew,  what  did 
she  ask  me  for  ?  Whenever  I  am  with  them  they 
ask  me  riddles  like  that,  and  I  simply  lead  a  dogs 
life.  Oh,  my  dear,  relations  are  like  drugs, — 
useful  sometimes,  and  even  pleasant,  if  taken  in 
small  quantities  and  seldom,  but  dreadfully  per- 


HER    GERMAN   GARDEN  223 

nicious  on  the  whole,  and  the  truly  wise  avoid 
them." 

From  Minora  I  have  only  had  one  communica- 
tion since  her  departure,  in  which  she  thanked  me 
for  her  pleasant  visit,  and  said  she  was  sending 
me  a  bottle  of  English  embrocation  to  rub  on  my 
bruises  after  skating  ;  that  it  was  wonderful  stuff, 
and  she  was  sure  I  would  like  it ;  and  that  it  cost 
two  marks,  and  would  I  send  stamps.  I  pondered 
long  over  this.  Was  it  a  parting  hit,  intended  as 
revenge  for  our  having  laughed  at  her  ?  Was  she 
personally  interested  in  the  sale  of  embrocation  ? 
Or  was  it  merely  Minora's  idea  of  a  graceful 
return  for  my  hospitality  ?  As  for  bruises,  nobody 
who  skates  decently  regards  it  as  a  bruise-produc- 
ing exercise,  and  whenever  there  were  any  they 
were  all  on  Minora ;  but  she  did  happen  to  turn 
round  once,  I  remember,  just  as  I  was  in  the  act 
of  tumbling  down  for  the  first  and  only  time,  and 
her  delight  was  but  thinly  veiled  by  her  excessive 
solicitude  and  sympathy.  I  sent  her  the  stamps, 
received  the  bottle,  and  resolved  to  let  her  drop 
out  of  my  life ;  I  had  been  a  good  Samaritan  to 
her  at  the  request  of  my  friend,  but  the  best  of 
Samaritans  resents  the  offer  of  healing  oil  for  his 
own  use. 


224  ELIZABETH   AND 

But  why  waste  a  thought  on  Minora  at  Easter, 
the  real  beginning  of  the  year  in  defiance  of 
calendars.  She  belongs  to  the  winter  that  is  past, 
to  the  darkness  that  is  over,  and  has  no  part  or  lot 
in  the  life  I  shall  lead  for  the  next  six  months. 
Oh,  I  could  dance  and  sing  for  joy  that  the  spring 
is  here !  What  a  resurrection  of  beauty  there  is 
in  my  garden,  and  of  brightest  hope  in  my  heart ! 
The  whole  of  this  radiant  Easter  day  I  have  spent 
out  of  doors,  sitting  at  first  among  the  windflowers 
and  celandines,  and  then,  later,  walking  with  the 
babies  to  the  Hirschwald,  to  see  what  the  spring 
had  been  doing  there ;  and  the  afternoon  was  so 
hot  that  we  lay  a  long  time  on  the  turf,  blinking 
up  through  the  leafless  branches  of  the  silvei 
birches  at  the  soft,  fat  little  white  clouds  floating 
motionless  in  the  blue.  We  had  tea  on  the  grass 
in  the  sun,  and  when  it  began  to  grow  late,  and 
the  babies  were  in  bed,  and  all  the  little  wind- 
flowers  folded  up  for  tl  e  night,  I  still  wandered 
in  the  green  paths,  my  heart  full  of  happiest 
gratitude.  It  makes  one  very  humble  to  see  one- 
self surrounded  by  such  a  wealth  of  beauty  and 
perfection  anonymously  lavished,  and  to  think 
of  the  infinite  meanness  of  our  own  grudging 
charities,  and  how  displeased  we  are  if  they  are 


HER   GERMAN   GARDEN  225 

not  promptly  and  properly  appreciated.  I  do 
sincerely  trust  that  the  benediction  that  is  always 
awaiting  me  in  my  garden  may  by  degrees  be  more 
deserved,  and  that  I  may  grow  in  grace,  and 
patience,  and  cheerfulness,  just  like  the  happy 
flowers  I  so  much  love. 


THE  SOLITARY  SUMMER 


BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF 


"Elizabeth  and  her  German  Garden 


Cloth.     i2mo.    $1.50 


"A  continuation  of  that  delightful  chronicle  of  days 
spent  in  and  about  one  of  the  most  delightful  gardens 
known  to  modern  literature.  The  author's  exquisite 
humor  is  ever  present,  and  her  descriptions  .  .  .  have 
a  wonderful  freshness  and  charm."  —  Evening  Post. 

(<  Perhaps  even  more  charming  than  the  fascinating 
original,  which  is  saying  a  great  deal." — Glasgow  Herald. 

"  One  of  the  most  charming  books  that  has  been  pub- 
lished for  many  a  month."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"It  is  inspired  by  a  garden  and  very  happily  inspired. 
The  best  praise  we  can  give  it  —  and  it  is  really  very 
high  praise  —  is  to  call  it  a  sequel  to  '  Elizabeth,'  which 
has  all  the  charm  of  its  predecessor  and  none  of  the 
common  faults  of  a  sequel." —  The  Times  (London). 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


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